There is a need to develop an ethical organ donation programme in the country as "paid donations" exploit the poor and the vulnerable, a health research body today said.
It also called for a monitoring system to ensure donations "first reach those who need it the most".
Ahead of Organ Donation Day on August 13, The George Institute for Global Health - India advocated for reforms in the context of both living as well as deceased organ donations so that the benefits could reach all who "truly" need them.
"While paid donations exploit the poor and the vulnerable - deceased donations, if not allocated in a transparent and fair manner, preferentially end up serving only the well-off. This is a serious human rights issue," said Vivekanand Jha of the institute.
"We need a monitoring system which ensures that the donations are made in an ethical manner and first reach those who need it the most," Jha said.
The institute said that with a promise of a hefty sum in return, individuals agree to donate organs, but eventually receive far less money that what was promised to them.
The continuing crackdown by law-enforcement authorities on such activities was "heartening" but, unfortunately, this has not proved enough of a deterrent, it said.
In a study, close to 95 per cent of organ sellers in India admitted their decision is not based on humanitarian ground of saving a patient with chronic kidney disease, and close to 90 per cent of them reported ill-health after selling organs.
"Even though we have a good law, only the very (well-off) are able to afford the cost of organ transplant. And so, an average Indian remains deprived. Now that the government has announced a National Dialysis Program, it would be a travesty if people prefer to stay on dialysis which is free rather than getting a kidney transplant.
"This is a serious human rights issue and a serious wastage of what actually is a national resource," Jha said.
A recent study has showed that in a big tertiary care centre, less than 10 per cent of presumed brainstem dead patients could be converted into actual donors, suggesting a huge untapped potential for deceased organs, the body said.
The Tamil Nadu Deceased Donor Donation programme and the Tamil Nadu Network for Organ Sharing have adopted "forward looking policies."
The deceased organ retrieval rate in Tamil Nadu is 1.3/million population (pmp), about 10 times more than the rest of the country. Data from the small Union territory of Chandigarh shows an even greater retrieval rate of 9.5 pmp. These examples show that given the will, it is indeed possible to improve performance, the body added.
