United social action to change the governing Act,1994

BACKGROUND
In the earlier blog I had suggested that civil society needs to unite in order to formulate and propose changes in attitudes, procedures and legislations concerning organ retrieval in India.These suggestions have to be put up to the government for effecting a change in policy. It is self defeating to be inactive under the comfortable argument that you can't make the government work. So some steps were taken....These took time; about a year -and-a-half in fact. But they were completed.

STEP No.1
A pan-India organization called the National Deceased donor Transplant Network (NDTN) was set up and registered with HQ in Mumbai. It's focus is to be on 'solid' (internal) organs and tissue like skin, heartvalves, etc. The elected president is Dr.Vatsala Trivedi, ex-HOD, Dept.of Neurosurgery at LTMG Hospital, Mumbai. Other founder -members include a Central Govt.body and representatives of organizations in Maharashtra, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Delhi, Karnataka and W.Bengal, with active involvement of some state govts.


STEP NO.2
NDTN then entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Then they jointly drafted proposals for amending the Human Organs Transplantation Act, 1994. The proposals incorporated the earlier steps worked out for eyes (corneas) by the Eye Bank Association of India(EBAI) in 2001/2002 through the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Law, Justice and Company affairs. Two concepts are central to the proposals:-

(a) Large hospitals (especially teaching hospitals) are to mandatorily expand their services beyond the death of patients in their wards. A sensitive request for organ donation of their choice is to be made to members of all bereaved families. Official protocols are also to be established for speedy organ retrieval.

(b) In cases where a live donor is to donate a kidney to a specified recipient, public disclosures of their names,relationships and intention, is to be made prior to authorizing the transplant surgery. This step is in line with existing procedures for inter-religion marriages, change of names, etc.,and is intended to discourage secret illegal organ dealings in kidneys.


STEP NO 3
These NDTN-NALSAR joint proposals for changes in legislation were forwarded to (i) Chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health, Shri Amar Singh, Rajya Sabha MP, and all thirty multi-party members of the committee. (ii) The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

This was done to ensure that any revised Act presented to Parliament by the Ministry of Health would get a proper all-round scrutiny before being put up for voting and passing into Law by the strength of majority enjoyed by the Ruling Party Alliance. It is to be recalled that the original 1994 Act was quickly passed by Parliament without any debate or discussion.