Ambiguity in Organ Act leaves kin helpless

The ambiguity in the Human Organ Transplant Act has left relatives of brain-dead patients helpless as doctors continue to ventilate the patients if their families do not agree to donate the victims' organs.

The doctors can remove the life support system from a 'brain dead' patient only when relatives agree to donate the organs else they wait till heart stops functioning and the person is declared 'clinically dead'.

The Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA), 1994, which has helped in increasing organ donation, only authorises declaration of brain stem death to those ready to donate organs.

Some doctors feel the Act is a kind of "exploitation" of those who do not agree to donate the organs of their relatives as it is a time-consuming process.

"It is true that doctors are not entitled to take a patient off the ventilator if the person is alive," said Dr Subash Gupta, liver transplant surgeon, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.

"Before HOTA, one can be dead only by cardiac arrest but after its introduction the criteria of brain death came into being. Once brain death has occurred, the body should be handed over to the relative rather than continuing to ventilate a corpse," he said.

Twenty private hospitals, one defence-run, one state-run and three civic body-run hospitals in the country are authorised to conduct cadaver organ transplant.