Grieving times: Organ retrieval centre in Bengaluru to make donation process easier on families

Bengaluru: In the next couple of months, a state-of-the-art non-transplant organ retrieval centre named Jeeva Spandana will be inaugurated at Victoria Hospital in the city. Unlike regular centres where brain-dead patients are moved directly to the operating theatre, this facility allows families private time to grieve before organ retrieval. This is aimed at encouraging organ donations by making the process more comfortable for families.Organ retrieval centres are specialised hospital facilities equipped to identify, maintain, and retrieve organs from brain-dead donors for transplantation. They focus on supporting donor families and coordinating with transplant centres, often without performing transplants themselves.
Announced in 2025 at a cost of Rs 1 crore, Jeeva Spandana aims to make the process easier for donors and their families, according to a medical officer at Victoria Hospital."Once the brain death is declared, we will separate the donors and their families from the regular ICU to the four-bed ICU in Jeeva Spandana," said Dr Deepak S, medical superintendent, Victoria Hospital. "This will be a smaller, more ambient space where family members can visit the patient as many times as they want and spend as much time as they want. We can then proceed with organ retrieval."The centre will feature an information kiosk and a communication centre. "The communication centre will have facilities to relay live updates about the organs to other cities, making it easier for them to plan transplant procedures," Dr Deepak added.Around the same time as the announcement of the centre at Victoria Hospital, health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao had stated that organ retrieval centres would be set up at 22 medical college hospitals across the country as per the norms. However, progress has been limited on this front."Apart from Victoria Hospital, we did not set up organ retrieval centres anywhere else, as the need is greater in Bengaluru than elsewhere," said Sharan Prakash Patil, medical education minister. "Here we conduct kidney transplants at the Institute of Nephro Urology and liver transplants at the Institute of Gastroenterology Sciences and Organ Transplant, so retrieval centres are necessary."He confirmed that there are no plans for additional centres in the near future, except for the 1,000-bed charitable super-specialty multi-organ transplant hospital being developed by the Azim Premji Foundation in collaboration with the state govt.