Let suspended hosp retrieve organ for transplant: Petition

MUMBAI: An organ failure patient has approached the Bombay high court with a plea that Hiranandani hospital, which had its licence suspended under the organ transplant law, be allowed to retrieve organs from a cadaver donor by doctors from a registered hospital.

The high court observed that the petition raised issues of whether “only registered hospitals” can perform retrieval and transplant operations and also whether the state government can intervene on the issue under the central act. A bench of Justice Naresh Patil and Justice Girish Kulkarni last month, observing the seriousness of the matter, directed that the Centre should be made a party and also that state advocate general Ashutosh Kumbhakoni be briefed on the issue.

The high court said one of the issues that had emerged was whether in view of the statement of objects of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994, the state would be entitled to frame guidelines and rules independently on the subject.

It also asked whether unregistered hospitals would be permitted to even allow retrieval of an organ of a patient admitted in the hospital by doctors attached to a registered hospital. Observing that serious questions were raised, the high court made the Centre a party to the petition and sought the involvement of the state advocate general.

A 43-year-old Dadar resident,Swapnil Raut, in a petition fled through advocate Ashish Mehta, said he “is suffering from organ failure and is in need of an organ transplant”. He made only the state and health secretary and director, health services a party to the petition which sought an “an authoritative pronouncement” from the high court “for retrieval of organs and tissues from the dead body of a cadaver donor lying at Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital”.

The cadaver donor has been certified by a registered medical practitioner as brainstem-dead, and the family of the cadaver donor consented to the retrieval of his organs and tissues for therapeutic use, said the petition.

Only, since the licence of the hospital stood suspended, the state was not permitting the procedure there.

The court was informed that the “family members of the cadaver donor, however, do not want to go through the ordeal of shifting the body to another hospital”.