Gender disparity in organ donation

In India, organ donations involving financial transactions are prohibited. Yet, news concerning kidney black-marketeering is common, the outrage involving poor, illiterate patients duped of their organs for paltry sums of cash, or cash-strapped donors parting with their kidneys in exchange for miserable compensation. Such large scale scandals highlight the economic inequality within the country. However, another wide prevailing skew in kidney donation is gender inequality Doctors at Narayana Health, an outsized Bangalore-headquartered hospital chain run by well-known cardiac doctor Devi Shetty, found that an amazing sixty-five per cent of kidney donors in its hospitals are ladies, whereas seventy per cent of kidney recipients are male.

The pressure on the woman to donate her organ is so high that, in order to save the reluctant lady, nephrologists like Vincent Lloyd, head of the department and senior advisor, Nephrology, of Narayana Hospitals, tell the family that the girl is “medically unfit” to from the kidney donation. If a woman confesses with the welfare worker or doctor that she is being forced to donate, doctors have learned to come back up with reasons for the ineptness of the actual donor to save them. This is truly a sad state for our country.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/vectors/kidney-anatomy-human-man-organ-147499/