Madras High Court Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala on Thursday, October 12, 2023 inaugurated an organ donation awareness camp at the court campus in the presence of other judges in the principal seat of the High Court in Chennai as well as those in the Madurai Bench who participated through video call.
Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram too shared the dais along with the Chief Justice. State Government Pleader P. Muthukumar was the first to sign a pledge agreeing to donate his organs. The camp had been planned till 5 pm in the court premises for making online and offline declarations.
Addressing the gathering, Health Secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi said, Spain was considered the forerunner among all countries in the world when it came to organ donation. As far as India was considered, Tamil Nadu was the Spain of the country since it had made tremendous progress, he said.
Mr. Bedi said so far 36,472 pledges had been made by the prospective donors and referred to the recent announcement made by the government of Tamil Nadu that State honours would be given, by placing wreath and garlands over the mortal remains, to the brain-dead persons whose organs get donated.
He said that totally 169 hospitals in Tamil Nadu harvest organs and that the entire process of organ transplantation programme had been made transparent though the Vidiyal app. The waitlist in the Vidyal app could not be tampered with, he said and pointed out that it was supervised by the Transplant Authority of the State government.
“Since 2008 when the organ donation programme was formalised in Tamil Nadu, as many as 1,737 organ donations had been done and through them, we have got 10,353 organs,” the Health Secretary said and stated that in the current year alone 128 organ donations had been made and from them 733 organs had been obtained.
Through those 128 organ donors, 53 heart transplants, 84 lung transplants, 114 livers, 228 kidneys, one stomach, 32 heart valves, 156 corneas, 17 skin pieces had been donated this year alone, he said and added that the merit of the organ donation process was that the organs could be utilised by multiple patients.
Despite all these efforts, the State has a long way to go since there were 6,923 recorded waitlisted persons who required organs. There was a need for 6,205 kidney, 443 liver and 75 heart patients were awaiting heart transplants besides 62 patients awaiting lungs as far as the formal recording was concerned, he said.
The Health Secretary said that 27 patients were waiting even for hand transplant. He thanked the judges of the Madras High Court for having expressed their solidarity in the conduct of the awareness campaign and recognised the efforts put in by Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran in organising the event.
He said that everyone who was willing to pledge their organs could sign the declarations online, through the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) website, using their Aadhaar details and by using an OTP received on their mobile phones.
