Only 7 kidney transplants in 6 yrs, 184 on wait list in govt hospitals

In six years, only seven out of 191 registered patients from govern ment hospitals in Kar nataka have received a kidney transplant. This is because only three government hospitals are licensed by the Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka (ZCCK) for organ transplantation, one each for kidney , liver and heart, making multi-organ transplant a fantasy in government health sector.On the other hand, 38 to 40 private super speciality hospitals have units for multiorgan transplants. Organ transplant specialists in the city point to the lack of manpower and infrastructure and the low remuneration for government doctors as the reasons behind poor record. Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, cardiologist and founderchair man of Narayana Health, said: "Arranging for organ transplantation is a huge logistical nightmare for hospitals. It is hard to coor dinate as the entire machinery should work at night. We need passionate doctors who are specially trained in this field. In government hospitals, such trained doctors are hard to find. Due to poor remuneration, most doctors shift to private hospitals.Moreover, adequate staff required for organ transplant are not found in government hospitals." Dr Nandakumar Jairam, chairman and group medical director of Columbia Asia Hospital, echoed Dr Shetty's views when he said insufficient infrastructure and manpower in government hospitals are the reasons for the longer queue for the poor."Transplants are best done in the few hospitals that have enough volume and good results," he said. ZCCK said only one of the six patients in government hospitals have undergone a liver transplant since 2009.The data shows that patients from lower economic sections in Karnataka who cannot afford treatment in private hospitals have to wait endlessly for an organ. -TOI