Kerala plans outcome-registry for clearer organ transplantation

Thiruvananthapuram: Seeking to bring in more accountability in organ donation initiatives in Kerala, the government is set to launch an outcome-registry to create awareness among people about results of organ transplantations.

The Kerala Network of Organ Sharing (KNOS), the state government's nodal agency for organ retrieval and sharing, said the outcome-registry would be a separate website with details of health status of patients who undergo organ transplantation and the performance details of hospitals.

KNOS is coming up with the outcome registry in view of increasing number of organ donations taking place in Kerala, where people once kept themselves away from the initiative due to personal inhibitions and religious reasons.

A senior health department official today said the outcome registry would be operational within one month and it is now being run on a trial basis.

"An outcome or survival registry is compulsory in all developed countries in connection with organ transplantation initiatives. But there is no such mandatory system in India. We are trying to introduce such a system in our state which will make the health delivery system more transparent and accountable," KNOS nodal officer Dr Noble Gracious told PTI.

Though most private hospitals charge heavily for organ transplantations,there is no particular system at present for public to evaluate their performance and the survival rate of patients who undergo surgeries there, he said.

"In many western countries, at least five year survival rate of patients is a must for hospitals or transplant centres to function. However, there are some hospitals in our country which claim hundred per cent results without giving any evidence to prove their claim," he said.

The new outcome registry would function as a performance appraisal of hospitals and transplant centres, he said.

"With the coming up of the outcome registry, patients and relatives can easily understand the survival rate of patients and the performance and success history of transplant centres," the official said, adding that it is the right of patients to know such fundamental details.

Based on the performance data updated on the registry,the government can even suspend the license of hospitals which fail in quality of their service delivery, Dr Gracious said.

The registry, to be managed by KNOS, can be viewed only by transplant hospitals in the initial phase and patients will get an access to it in the next stage, he said.

The state already has an Online Transplant Registry maintaining records of patients on waiting list for kidney, liver, heart and pancreas transplants. Patients waiting for organ transplantation from various hospitals authorized to perform transplantations register their cases in the registry.

According to government statistics, as many as 145 major organs, including 40 livers, 89 kidneys and eight hearts have been retrieved from 49 donors in the state so far since January this year.

The number of donors is expected to go up to around 70 in the coming months, health department sources added.