The Maharashtra Government on Tuesday set up a task force to coordinate the entire process of organ donation and organ transplantation. The 15-member task force is headed by the Public Health Minister and comprises leading medical practitioners including Dr SK Mathur, Dr Rahul Pandit, Dr Gustad Davar, Dr Kapil Zirpe, Dr Sriran Bicchu, Dr Sanjay Kolte and Dr Pravin Suryavanshi. The other members include the public health department additional chief secretary, medical education department secretary, Health Services Commissioner and Medical Education & Research.
The public health department under secretary Sanjay Mahadeshwar issued the government resolution on the establishment of task force. The task force’s mandate is to increase the deceased organ donation and give approval to private and government hospitals with ICU and operation theatres as organ retrieval centers.
Further, the task force is mandated with the job of creating separate ICUs in all medical colleges and hospitals. The government has set targets to the task force of 260 organ donations in 2022 and 500 in 2023.
The government’s decision came days after the State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (SOTTO) of Maharashtra won the award for the highest number of deceased donors transplantations while Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (ROTTO) for the Western Region was recognised for best performance.
According to the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation (GODT), the total number of organ transplants done per year in India has increased from 4,990 in the year 2013 to 12,746 in the year 2019 and India now ranks third in the world only behind USA and China. A state health department officer said that Maharashtra is one of the key states in organ donation and transplantation and with the establishment of the task force the government is quite eager to increase it.
