Meghalaya faces challenges in organ donation and transplantation due to infrastructure constraints as well as cultural issues and lack of knowledge on the subject.
A programme was held here today on deceased organ donation, with Priyanka Borah of Zublee Foundation stating that there is limited or no data on how many people from Meghalaya get transplants done from other parts of the country.
“There is scarcity of data regarding organ transplantation and donation,” she said while advocating for comprehensive data collection and analysis.
Borah also said that not many hospitals in Meghalaya are equipped or have the necessary expertise for organ donation and transplantation.
“There is an urgent need to establish infrastructure to support these critical medical procedures,” she added.
The CEO of Zublee Foundation also said that there is limited awareness and lack of understanding on deceased organ donation among the public. “So we need to raise awareness as much as possible,” she said, adding that cultural beliefs are also an obstacle to deceased organ donation.
According to Borah, the roadmap for establishing a deceased organ donation programme will take awareness and education, as well as a policy and regulatory framework wherein state specific guidelines need to be developed to streamline organ donation.
She also said that another step is to have a legal framework to facilitate organ donation and the state government’s approval to perform organ donation and transplantation as well as the necessary infrastructure for transplant centres.
Borah also called for a centralised donor registry to keep records so that the whole process is done in a transparent manner.
Meanwhile, Joram Beda, Commissioner and Secretary in the Health and Family Welfare Department, said that he was shocked to learn that in Meghalaya there is no registered organ donation or transplantation organisation.
Due to legal provisions in the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994, there is a lot of red tape involved but, he said, there is huge potential for deceased organ donation, though this has not been explored particularly well in the North East.
He added that there is no proper organ storage system and for that reason brain dead individuals who would make good donors cannot have their organs harvested and stored, meaning that organ transplantation is impossible.
