DMER: Hospitals to screen transplant applications in Pune

PUNE: The Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), through a new circular, has instructed the competent authority of hospitals to thoroughly screen organ transplant applications before forwarding them to district- or state-level panels. A hospital authority will have to record "prima facie satisfaction" that there has been no commercial transaction between a recipient and the donor.
The DMER clarified that the competent authority of a hospital will only act as a filter to strengthen the hands of the state- or the district-level authorisation committee.
There has been some resistance to the DMER circular.

Meenakshi Deshpande, president of IMA Pune, said, "The latest circular will once again take us two steps back in organ donation in the region. The waiting list will increase and so will the suffering of patients. It is not a doctor's job to verify the documents. The government must appoint an agency for verification of the documents, which can challenge the authenticity."
The circular states, "In the recent past, in respect to many proposals received from hospitals for approval of transplant, the state authorisation committee found that proposals were so casually forwarded to the committee that documents submitted were not even signed by anybody. It was, therefore, thought fit to issue following directions so that at the transplantation centre and/or hospital-level, such proposals are handled responsibly."
The new circular, the DMER said, will apply only to cases in which transplant is between "other than near relatives" and/or where the donor or recipient is a foreign national and/or to cases of swap donation.
Director of medical education and research Dilip Mhaisekar said, "As per the high court's instructions, we have issued a new circular as per the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994, which means the competent authority must verify all documents of the donor and recipient, who are in the swap transfer."
The DMER had issued a similar circular on May 9 after the Association of Hospitals, Pune, moved the Bombay high court against an April 11 circular that put the entire onus of verification on hospitals. The state then on May 6 told the high court that the April 11 circular was being withdrawn and an appropriate circular would be issued later.