This gives the armed forces an enviable statistic of four out of every ten (40%) brain-dead soldiers and officers opting to donate their organs after death.
When it comes to cadaveric transplants, the Armed Forces of India are showing the way by performing as many as 300 cadaveric kidney transplants in 2010 alone.
This gives the armed forces an enviable statistic of four out of every ten (40%) brain-dead soldiers and officers opting to donate their organs after death.
Disclosing this to media persons in Pune after the conclusion of the three-day 59th Armed Forces Medical Conference in the city on Friday, Lt Gen Naresh Kumar, officiating director general armed forces medical services, said that 120 of these transplants were done at the Army Hospital Research and Referral (AH&RR) in New Delhi with the rest being performed across armed forces hospitals in India.
According to Lt Gen Kumar, the armed forces had also successfully performed 50 liver transplants and two cadaveric heart transplants in the last two years.
“We have been successful after years of planning and systematic information dissemination across all our units in the army, navy and air force,” Kumar said.
Lt Gen Kumar said that the message of cadaveric transplants had been disseminated at the regimental level and even special motorcycle rallies had been undertaken across the country to spread the message.
But road blocks still exist. Maj Gen Mandeep Singh, additional director general, armed forces medical services (medical research), pointed out how the army could not airlift the kidneys of a brain-dead soldier from Mumbai to Delhi, because the Maharashtra government’s organ transplant rule did not permit an inter-state transfer. Gen Singh said, “We have approached the Centre and have asked them to write to all state governments, asking them to amend this rule.”
The senior army medical officers stated that cornea transplants had become routine and all armed forces eye banks had a facility to store cornea transplants.
It may be recalled that DNA (February 1 and 4) had highlighted the case of the family of a brain-dead Gujarati-Jain paint dealer who had donated his kidneys. The act had received the support of the Jain community and spiritual leaders.
The example set by the Indian Armed Forces is likely to inspire the ordinary people to opt to donate organs after their deaths.
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