Mumbai: Nearly two decades after receiving a portion of his father’s liver as an 11-year-old due to a lack of deceased donors, a 30-year-old man has once again had to rely on a living family member for a second organ transplant. Top transplant specialists said on Wednesday that he has joined a small group of patients in the country to undergo a second liver transplant after living a long life with the first graft.This time his mother had to step forward as the donor. The organ donation rates and transplant infrastructure have improved over the last 19 years, rising from just 3 deceased donor liver transplants in 2007 to 34 by July of this year.But the numbers could not help Jitin Shirke, an Andheri resident who was placed on Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC) recipient list in mid-June. “My condition deteriorated within a couple of weeks of enlisting. I was unconscious for four days and doctors advised us that an immediate transplant was required,” Shirke said.Following an evaluation, his mother was deemed an eligible donor. Doctors at Jaslok Hospital, where the surgery took place, said that the patient suffered from autoimmune cirrhosis. They said that while graft failure typically occurs in the early post-transplant period, Shirke enjoyed 19 years of graft survival before his body ultimately faced late rejection.“Deceased organ donors are still less and very few patients are fortunate enough to find an eligible living donor in their immediate family on such short notice. This patient was lucky,” said Dr Aabha Nagral, a liver transplant specialist at the hospital who was involved in the case.About 80% of all organ transplants are from living donors like Jitin’s parents. According to data from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, only 18% to 20% of transplants in India come from deceased donors. This is in contrast to developed nations, where deceased donors account for 85% to 95% of transplants.Jitin recalled that during his first transplant as a child, his family had to make the rounds of multiple hospitals because very few facilities had the necessary infrastructure at the time.Dr S K Mathur, who performed Jitin’s initial transplant in 2007 and now serves as president of ZTCC, said that India’s Transplantation of Human Organs Act was passed in 1994, a decade after similar legislation in the United States.“If we want to increase organ donation and transplant, there needs to be stricter auditing of hospitals. Facilities holding transplant licence should be regularly audited by the govt on the number of brain-stem deaths identified, donations processed, and awareness efforts undertaken,” he said.
