India has lower deceased organ donation rate than peers, shows data

Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka top deceased organ donor transplantations

The US has a 100 times higher deceased organ donation rate than India.

The US saw 41 deceased organ donors per million population, shows data from the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation. In India, the rate is 0.4. Other large economies also have a higher deceased organ donor rate relative to population.

The rate is 24.7 for France, 19.8 for the UK, 11.1 for Germany and 0.62 for Japan among the advanced economies. Emerging market peers like Brazil (13.8) and China (3.63) also have a higher rate than India. The data is for 2021. Numbers were similar in 2019 (chart 1).

Most of these countries, barring the US, saw a decline in organ donation relative to 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated disruptions are said to have played a part. India also saw a similar trend. India's number slipped from 0.52 in 2019 to 0.4 in 2021.

There are more living than deceased transplants in India. According to the latest data from the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), there were 13,338 living transplants in 2022. The number of deceased transplants was 2,694. The numbers show a rising trend over the last decade (chart 2).
 

Most of the living donor transplants took place in Delhi (3,422), Tamil Nadu (1,690), Kerala (1,423), Maharashtra (1,222) and West Bengal (1,059). The top five states in terms of deceased donor transplants were Tamil Nadu (555), Telangana (524), Karnataka (478), Gujarat (398) and Maharashtra (303).

However, the pace of transplants continues to be insufficient as the necessity of organ donations has outpaced the supply of donations. As many as 57,000 patients in need of various organ transplants were registered by NOTTO up to the year 2022 (chart 3).



The government does not record the precise number of Indians requiring such procedures, so the waiting list may well be longer.

There are nearly four times as many registered patients awaiting organs as there were transplants in 2022. The number of procedures by organ suggests that a kidney and a liver transplant were more likely to take place than those in need of a lung or intestine transplant (chart 4).
 

Restrictions based on age have been removed, which means that more patients who were earlier unable to register for a transplant would now be able to get one, suggested the government in a parliament reply on 4 August.

"...now a person of any age can be registered for receiving deceased donor organ transplantation. The earlier NOTTO policy allowed registration only for patients younger than 65 years of age," it said.