Anupriya inaugurates the National Biomaterial Centre

New Delhi, November 24, 2017: Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel on Wednesday stressed the need to promote cadaver or deceased organ donation rather than relying on living donors and avoid the risk of commercial trading of organs.

The minister was speaking after inaugurating the National Biomaterial Centre (National Tissue Bank) at the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), set up to fill up the gap between demand and supply as well as quality assurance in the availability of various tissues.

Speaking at the function, Ms Patel said it was important to understand that in India it was mainly the living donors who were donating organs and only about 23 per cent of the organ transplant was being done with organs obtained from the cadavers. ‘There is a need to promote cadaver or deceased organ donation rather than relying on living donors in order to avoid the risk of commercial trading of organs and also to avoid the
inherent risk to the health of the living donor,’ she told the gathering.

‘It’s high time we understand, and also spread awareness in the community at large, that a living person can save the life of only one person but a deceased or cadaver organ donor can save up to nine lives by donating vital organs,’ but it was also important to improve the infrastructure and capacity of government hospitals to undertake transplantation so that the poor and needy could benefit, she felt.

Congratulating Safdarjung Hospital on this initiative, Ms Patel said deriving inspiration from this more and more government hospitals should come forward and take up organ transplantation task to benefit the poor and needy patients of India.

The National level Tissue Bank will fulfill the demands of tissue transplantation including activities for procurement, storage and fulfill distribution of biomaterials. The centre will take care of the tissue allografts that includes bone and bone products e.g. deep frozen bone allograft, freeze dried bone allograft, dowel allograft, AAA Bone, duramater, facialata, fresh frozen human amniotic membrane, high temperature treated board cadaveric joints like knees, hips and shoulders, cadaveric cranium bone graft, loose bone fragment, different types of bovine allograft, used in orthodontics, skin graft, cornea, heart valves and vessels. The Centre will also add other tissues gradually.

The centre will coordinate tissue procurement and distribution, screen donor tissue, remove tissues and storage, tissue preservation, laboratory screening of tissues, tissue tracking, sterilisation, records maintenance, data protection and confidentiality, quality management in tissues, patient information on tissues, development of guidelines, protocols and standard operating procedures, trainings and assisting as per requirement in registration of other tissue banks, an official release here said.

United News of India