Kidney racket: Committee has no idea of renal transplantations

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, June 18, 2014:  While there are reports that more than 30 kidney transplantations take place in the corporate hospitals in the city in a month, the district level Authorisation Committee that has to approve the renal transplantation as per the guidelines issued by the state government based on the Transplantation of Human Organs Act of the union government, get only 3 to 5 such requests in a month.

It shows that most of the kidney transplantations either go unnoticed or unreported. The local general hospital head acts as the chairman of such committee. In Vizag the King George Hospital (KGH) superintendent acts as the Committee chairman and professors of urology, nephrology, medicine and related subjects are the other members.

“After thorough verification of the applications and cases that come to us in all angles we give a go ahead nod. Without scrutiny we don’t process any applications. On an average we get around 3 to 5 such applications in a month. Not sure if any transplantations go unreported. We do an intense verification of the applications we get beyond any doubt on social parameters also,” said KGH in charge superintendent, Dr B Uday Bhaskar.

The DNA profiling of the donor and acceptor as suggested by some experts to avoid any illegal sale of kidneys sometimes fails in the case of wife and husband and sometimes during critical cases as the process is time consuming due to non availability of forensic labs locally.

“If the donor is a wife and to cross check it we can’t rely on DNA profiling. Sometimes in critical cases, it takes lot of time to get it done as the samples need to be sent to Hyderabad forensic labs. A thorough background check is the only possible solution to check such thriving illegal trade,” said a nephrologist.