Written by Intern Rency Gomes || Team Allycaral
Organ donation requires greater public awareness, stronger institutional infrastructure and, most importantly, family consent, said organ donation ambassador Gabriel Pereira during a centenary lecture organised by Clube Tennis de Gaspar Dias in Panaji.
Delivering a talk titled “Organ Donation: A Gift That Saves Lives”, Pereira explained how organ donation works within India’s legal and medical framework and addressed several misconceptions surrounding the process.
He said that simply possessing an organ donor card does not guarantee that organs will be donated. According to Pereira, family consent is mandatory even if a person has registered as a donor.
“Even if you have an organ donor card, it doesn’t mean that your organs will be donated after you are brain dead as family’s consent is a must,” he said, adding that one must be fortunate to ultimately become an organ donor.
Pereira also pointed out that many people are unaware of the specific medical conditions required for organ donation. He explained that organ donation is only possible when a person is declared brain dead in a hospital setting.
If a person dies at home due to circulatory death, organs cannot be donated, although tissues such as skin and corneas can still be donated. Body donation to medical schools is also possible in such cases.
During the lecture, Pereira outlined the organs that can be donated, including the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and intestine. However, he noted that India continues to have one of the lowest organ donation rates in the world.
He attributed this partly to India’s opt-in system, where individuals must actively register their consent to donate organs, unlike countries such as Spain that follow an opt-out system which has helped improve donation rates.
Speaking about the situation in Goa, Pereira said the state was among the early adopters of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994. However, the State Organ Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO) in Goa was established only after the Goa-based NGO Mango Foundation filed a public interest litigation before the Bombay High Court at Goa in 2018.
Despite progress in the sector, Pereira highlighted that Goa still does not have an eye bank, which is an important requirement for strengthening corneal donation programmes.
He noted that cornea donation remains one of the most effective forms of tissue donation and can often be carried out even if a person had conditions such as diabetes or had previously undergone cataract surgery.
Providing an overview of the current transplant scenario, Pereira said that there are currently 83 patients in Goa waiting for kidney transplants. Out of these, 15 patients are presently inactive on the transplant list as their medical parameters are not yet suitable for surgery.
Kidney transplants in Goa are currently carried out at Goa Medical College, Manipal Hospital Goa and Healthway Hospitals Old Goa. Cornea transplant procedures are performed at Healthway Hospitals and ASG Eye Hospital.
According to Pereira, Goa has recorded eight brain-dead organ donations so far, of which seven donors were migrants. The figures, he said, highlight the need for greater awareness among the public about organ donation and the conditions under which it becomes medically possible.
He also encouraged people interested in pledging their organs to register through the Government of India’s National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation portal or contact the MOHAN Foundation helpline for further guidance.
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