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State sets up panel to reduce organ transplant cost

The state appointed the committee under the chairmanship of Dr Gustad Daver, president of the Zonal Transplantation Co-ordination Committee (ZTCC). In the state, ZTCC coordinates between donor and recipient families.

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After getting huge success in the cadaver donation and organ transplant programmes in Maharashtra, the state health department has now decided to focus on how to make the latter affordable for the middle class and the poor. The department has appointed an expert committee to study the health-care infrastructure and ways to reduce costs. The report is expected to be submitted to the government within two months.

The state appointed the committee under the chairmanship of Dr Gustad Daver, president of the Zonal Transplantation Co-ordination Committee (ZTCC). In the state, ZTCC coordinates between donor and recipient families.

Patients who need organs have to register with the ZTCC, which maintains a registry of such patients.

"Awareness about organ donation has been created among people but, so far, to a certain extent. The number of organ transplants has been going up every year. However, the main hitch is the high cost. Hence, we are try to work on how we can reduce that and make the procedure affordable. For this, we asked the most senior doctors to take a holistic approach and prepare the report," said Dr Deepak Sawant, state health minister.

"We have many super-specialty civic hospitals across the state. We also have four civic-run and 13 state medical colleges, where we are planning to start conducting organ transplants. Once the expert committee's report is in, we will try to see how we can reduce the cost of the procedure."

Generally, in private hospitals, a liver transplant costs around Rs18-25 lakh, a kidney transplant costs Rs3.5-6 lakh, and heart transplant around Rs20-25 lakh. These high costs put a lot of stress on a patient's relatives, who, most of the time, end up having to run from pillar to post to arrange the money, approaching NGOs and well-wishers. It's also happened that a patient on the list has had to forego the surgery if his/her family members haven't been able to gather the money required to pay the hospital.

Daver told dna, "This is a very good move by the health department. Since 1994, we are working on this cause. Now that we have taken up this assignment, we will look into how we can make the transplant procedure affordable."

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