Learn more on Organ donation day | Fusion - WeRIndia

Every year lakhs of people die due to the lack of organs for transplant. Sometimes, even when the organs are available, the errors in the system leads to failure. There are many problems in organ transplant field. This includes lack of infrastructure needed to harvest the organ and transport it and prohibitive cost of the surgery.

In many developed countries, the government or insurance companies fund the transplant surgeries. However, in India many people have trouble covering the financial cost of the transplant. Very few transplant centres in the government sector actually do it for highly subsidized costs let alone do it for free. The immunosuppressants that the patients have to take after the surgery for the rest of the life also cost around Rs 8,000 – Rs 12,000 a month.

Liver transplants in our country takes Rs 18 lakh to 26 lakh. These charge include only the transplant surgery, 13-18 days of hospitalisation and charges for a few postoperative consultations with the doctor. It does not include pre-operative tests which cost around Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh and post-operative tests. Heart transplants costs around Rs 16 lakh in our country. The transplant patients are supposed to be on immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives.

The government needs to take charge of the transplants in our country and provide support to people. If not, transplants will be limited to a very small group of people in our country.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/organ-donation-heart-finger-live-4301527/