Thanks to the increased awareness, organ donation has picked up in India again which had fallen during the pandemic. India recorded 12,387 organs harvested from deceased as well as living donors in 2021.
The data however reveals that there are certain regions where organ donation is more than other areas. The Indian states in the south and the west donated more organs even as only 15 states figure in the donor list.
Gujarat, Maharashtra and the southern states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka along with Delhi remain in the forefront of organ donations. These states accounted for 85 per cent of all the deceased donations seen in 2021. This may be attributed to the medical hubs and availability of more experienced doctors in these states.
In the past five years, there have been 2891 organ donations from Gujarat, out of which 794 were the living donations and 2097 were donations from deceased persons. During the first pandemic year, 2020, the total number of donations dropped to 7,519. The highest number of organ donations were seen, 12,746 in 2019 in the last five years.
At present only 2.6 organs are used on an average from every deceased donor. The organisations are trying to bring this number as close to 8 as possible. Just over 14 per cent of the total donated organs came from deceased donors, as against the previous high during the five years period, 16.8 percent figure seen in 2019. For iving donors, the numbers increased after COVID pandemic as restrictions were eased and hospitals could restart routine surgeries.
Authorities aim to reverse the current trend of nearly 80 per cent transplants using organs from living donors. The National Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organisation, which comes under the Health Ministry is focusing on creating awareness among people.
With fewer living donor transplants, the proportion of deceased organ donations was higher in 2017 and 2018, standing at 22.5 percent and 23.6 per cent of the total organs donated in those respective years.
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