The act of donating an organ is altruistic, but transplantation is way too expensive for most middle class people and certainly for the poor. In India, about 90% of transplants are carried out in the private sector and cost lakhs of rupees.“Organ donation is driven by altruism. Most donors, many of them accident victims with head injuries, land up in government hospitals where organs are harvested.

Recipients are mostly in corporate hospitals as there aren’t enough transplant centres in public sector hospitals,” says Dr Sunil Shroff, senior consultant urologist and transplant surgeon, who is managing trustee of Mohan Foundation, an NGO promoting organ donation.The willingness to donate is steadily increasing. But as Dr George Abraham, a top surgeon in the field, said in June: “Equally important is to make transplants more affordable, so that a larger section of the community can benefit from an ncreased organ pool.” Dr Abraham was speaking at the mid-term meeting of the Indian Society of Organ Transplantations (ISOT). At that session, transplant surgeons discussed standardising transplant care and making the process inexpensive…..Readmore