By Our Chief Reporter
Panaji (Goa) While Goa government has ordered inquiry into the failure to use, the harvested kidney from a brain dead patient in the state itself, a senior official from Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has reiterated the need for setting up State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO).
Goa is amongst the states, which do not have SOTTO in place due to which cadaveric organ donations have faced a major setback. National Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organisation (NOTTO) has made it mandatory for the states to have their own bodies (SOTTO) so that the organs and tissues are collected scientifically from donors and distributed to the patients.
The issue surfaced yesterday after State Health minister Vishwajit Rane ordered inquiry into the instance where the organs of a brain dead donor were harvested in a private hospital near here and were transported to Mumbai without giving them to Goa medical college and hospital (GMCH), which was waiting for it to be transplanted on its patient.
The GMCH had claimed that they were waiting for the kidney to be transplanted on its patient in the hospital, which is located next to the private facility where the organ was harvested, but instead it was taken to Mumbai for another patient.
Dr Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, Director of Regional and State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation’s Western Region which is affiliated to Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has written letter to Goa’s Director of Health Services Dr Sanjiv Dalvi has said in the letter that the SOTTO is not in place in the coastal state due to which it does not have approved waiting list of kidney recipients, so there was no one to whom the kidney could be allocated.
Gajiwala’s letter dated April 10, 2018, has said that the State also does not have emergency cross matching facility which is required for transplants.
He has said that the in future Goa could be benefitted with the cadaveric organ donation provided it establishes SOTTO. The state has also been adviced to maintain a criteria based transplant waiting list for organans and link it to Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO) and NOTTO.
Meanwhile, Rane has formed a team of GMCH officers to investigate why the organ could not be transplanted on local patient. Dr Mahesh Panche, who has been appointed as organ coordinator by GMCH, has been asked not to leave the state without permission till inquiry is completed.
