To give poor equal access to transplants, SC to set norms

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to frame a comprehensive guideline on organ transplant to enable the poor and marginalised equal access to these life-saving surgical procedures and sought joint suggestions from govt and the petitioner.Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate K Parameshwar told a bench of CJI B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran there must be a national organ availability data grid to enable the prospective recipients in queue to know where they stand and the chance of them getting a transplant. A state-wide waitlist of recipients must be prepared, he said.Parameshwar said people belonging to poor and marginalised sections of society do not stand a chance to get organ transplants as 90% of hospitals and clinics, accredited to carry out the surgical procedures, are in the private sector, which is accessible only to the rich and influential.He said SC must direct the Centre and states to establish at least one hospital in each state and UT to enable poor patients to avail organ transplant surgery at an affordable cost. He also flagged the skewed gender ratio among organ donors as majority of donors were women, though majority of men were recipients.Solicitor general Tushar Mehta agreed to the petitioner’s suggestions, but said there should be two regimes – one for normal donors, and the other for cases where organs are harvested from those dying in accidents. Justice Chandran said in the south there were many cases of “motivated accidents” to enable harvesting of organs for an interested recipient. “It happens mostly on highways, I am told. A film was made in Kerala on this issue, and the script was written by a serving police officer who probably knew about this scam,” he said.Mehta termed them shocking cases of murder. The CJI-led bench asked Mehta, additional solicitor general Archana D Pathak and Parameshwar to draft the common points to be included in the order and place it before the court on Wednesday.