Hyderabad: The health department has intensified its monitoring of organ transplantation procedures. It has directed private hospitals with multiple branches not to use their network of branches as a loophole to accumulate organs without contributing to the common pool.
Under the new directive, if a multi-branch hospital transplants an organ, it must donate the next available cadaver organ (from any of its branches) to the shared pool. Previously, each branch operated independently, allowing hospitals to acquire more organs without mandatory contributions. Now, all branches of a hospital will be treated as a single entity in organ distribution.
States must comply with the National Organ Transplant Programme guidelines (2020-2025) and work towards bridging the gap between organ supply and demand. In the govt sector, organ transplants are authorised at NIMS, Gandhi, Osmania, and ESIC hospitals, along with 37 private hospitals, making a total of 41 transplant centres in Hyderabad. Of these, 18 centres are branches of seven major hospitals, while the rest operate independently. Two hospitals have four branches each conducting transplants.
Many private hospitals take more organs from the common pool than they contribute, official sources said. As per regulations, if a hospital retrieves an organ from a deceased donor within its facility, it has the first right to transplant it. However, the next available organ from any of its branches must be allocated to the common pool. Hospitals with multiple branches often bypass this rule by using the second retrieved organ within their own network instead of contributing it, treating each branch as a separate entity, sources added.
To tackle this, authorities will tighten Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for organ transplants, which exist but have not been effectively enforced. An analysis of organ contributions found that private hospitals, on average, donate just 2.5 organs every five years while extracting hundreds from the common pool.
