State honour buoys organ pledges by 27 times

CHENNAI: As an idea, it was rather simple: accord State honour for the funeral if the kin of the deceased come forward to donate the person’s organs. But such was the impact of the move that it is quietly scripting a sea change in the public’s attitude towards cadaver organ donations, with the number of organ donor pledges crossing 2,700 in just five weeks. To put this in perspective, it used to be just about 100 pledges a month.

As part of the honours, a senior official – the district collector in most cases – will represent the State at the funeral and place a wreath on behalf of the government.

“Since the announcement was made on September 23, observed in the State as organ donation awareness day, the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (Transtan) has received as many as 2,718 organ donor pledges (till November 5), up from a maximum of 100 per month till then,” Transtan member secretary Dr N Gopalakrishnan told DT Next.

The positive impact is not limited to donations alone. Since that day, the State has recorded 23 cadaver organ donations – nearly five a week, up from three per week till then. Officials here believe that the numbers will go up in the coming days, and even hope the number of families agreeing for cadaver organ donations will cross last year’s number of 156 from the present around 120.

For the record, the highest cadaver organ donations happened in 2016, when there were 180 such cases.

Meanwhile, Transtan has recorded an all-time high number of organ donations and transplants in government hospitals until November this year, recording 201 organ donations by 52 donors.

Since 2008 when the transplant programme was taken up in a big way, 10,416 organs were harvested from 1,748 donors.