Talking about the plan, Dr Sawant said, "We will come out with an SOP soon. Moreover, both donors and recipients will be linked via Aadhar card, which will prevent fake donors from selling their kidneys for monetary gain."
Following the arrest of five Hiranandani hospital doctors in connection with the kidney racket last week, the Maharashtra government has decided to lay down a strict strategy to prevent such scams in future. It includes formulating Standard Operating Protocol (SOP) for transplant procedures, putting the record of donors and recipients online, linking them via Aadhar card, and so on.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has constituted an expert committee headed by health minister Dr Deepak Sawant to frame the SOP on a priority basis and lay down rules for other measures. The committee includes urologists, nephrologists, members of the Medical Council of Maharashtra, officers of law and judiciary department and private doctors.
Talking about the plan, Dr Sawant said, "We will come out with an SOP soon. Moreover, both donors and recipients will be linked via Aadhar card, which will prevent fake donors from selling their kidneys for monetary gain."
The Aadhar card would be able to provide details of donors and recipients from across India, he added.
The government also plans to make the sensitisation programme mandatory for all donors and recipients. "Under the sensitisation programme, donors and recipients will be shown a video in which implications and complications of the transplant will be explained to them. The entire process will be video recorded and later, a declaration form will have to be filled by them, stating that they understand and agree for the transplant," said Dr Sawant.
He added, "Periodical workshops will also be held for doctors involved in organ transplant. This will not only keep them updated about the latest rules but also the correct methods. Attending such workshops is mandatory even now for registration renewal, but many doctors avoid it."
Mumbai-based L H Hiranandani hospital's CEO, medical director and three other doctors were recently arrested in connection with the kidney transplant racket. In the case that threw off the lid from the racket, the donor and the recipient had submitted forged documents, including forged Aadhar cards and a marriage certificate.
Medical practitioners in the city then protested against the doctors' arrest and contended that it was not their job to scrutinise documents. The Union Health Ministry's National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) will now explore if biometric data of Aadhar cardholders could be procured to establish the donor's identity. The system would throw up the biometric data, once the Aadhar number of a person is fed into it.
Meanwhile, Dr Pravin Shingare, director of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), said, "Most doctors have started taking up operations now. There are only a few who are not taking up cases and we are trying to convince them."
Doctors, however, said they were taking up only those cases that were already lined up and were waiting for the government to revert to them in the one week it had sought. "Representatives of both nephrology and urology associations have said they will not interfere with the ongoing cases, but fresh applications will be taken up after a new system is devised. The government has sought a week's time. It was never the intent of the doctors to stop transplants," said Dr Sudhir Naik, president of the Association of Medical Consultants.
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