The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a body blow to organ transplantation and aggravated the existing gap between patients awaiting transplants and organ availability. Since the start of the pandemic 15 months ago, the queue of patients requiring organs has only increased.

The main source of organ availability was from victims of road accidents. But with the Covid lockdown road traffic has dropped and that has meant fewer accidents and non-availability of organs for transplanting.

Also, patients are unwilling to accept organs from other donors due to concerns about possible Covid infection. This has created an unprecedented demand- supply mismatch.

‘Down by half’

At any point, four or five organs were available for transplantation. But now hospitals do not get any for three-four weeks, said a doctor who is deeply involved in organ transplant in Tamil Nadu, one of the best performing States in this area. Over 768 transplants were conducted in 2019 in the State but the number has more than halved in 2020 to 368, according to government data.

Similarly, in Karnataka only 35 organ transplants were done in 2020 - that too in January and February (pre-Covid) - as against 105 in 2019. According to Dr Kishore Phadke, State Convenor, Jeevasarthakathe, which oversees the implementation of organ transplantation in the State, around 3,750 patients are awaiting transplantation operation. The trend is the same across the country, he added.

Government data says annually around 1.8 lakh persons suffer from renal failure but only 6,000 renal transplants are done. About 2 lakh die of liver failure or liver cancer - 10-15 per cent of them could be saved with a timely liver transplant. Similarly, about 50,000 persons suffer from heart failures but only about 10 to 15 heart transplants are performed every year. The deceased donor organ donation is very resource-intensive for the donor hospital - right from the point of grief counselling and family counselling for organ donation to the subsequent process of donation itself. With the increased stress on healthcare worker resources during the pandemic, organ donation took a back seat, said Dr Gomathy Narasimhan, Liver and Renal Transplant Surgeon, Dr Rela Institute and Medical Centre.

‘New set of patients’

Dr Julius Punnen, Senior Consultant, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgery, Narayana Health City, said that Covid has added an additional set of patients who have end stage lung disease due to Covid pneumonia.

However, Dr RK Venkatasalam, Director, Medical Services, Apollo Hospitals, is hopeful that things should improve as the second wave recedes.

Related Topics