BMC hospitals to get full-fledged organ transplant programme

Mumbai: The four tertiary care hospitals run by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) hospitals are set to start full-fledged organ transplant programme including heart and lung transplants.

At present, KEM Hospital and BYL Nair Hospital run the kidney transplant programme. KEM Hospital also has the hand transplant and liver transplant programme.

Dr Sudhakar Shinde, additional municipal commissioner, BMC, said, “We have in principle decided to revive all the locations where organ transplant was going on in our hospitals. and to start in other hospitals. I am going to have an institution-wise meeting next week.”

He said they will be taking the help of the city’s organ transplant experts working in private set-ups.

“We have a policy of private hospital doctors working with us on an honorary basis. They can help us set up the organ transplant programme in our institutions and can teach our students and strengthen the programme,” said Dr Shinde, who added that they are yet to work out the monetary part of each transplant.

“A liver transplant in a private hospital will be close to ₹35 lakh. In KEM hospital, it is close to ₹5 lakh. The cost of a heart transplant in a private hospital is close to ₹30 lakh. Having an organ transplant programme in a civic hospital will be a boon to many poor patients. We have good doctors and infrastructure can be strengthened,” said a civic health official.

While heart and lung transplant is now commonly done in private hospitals in the city, it was in 1968 that Dr PK Sen and his team from KEM Hospital, Parel, carried out two transplants with limited success, barely six months after South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant.

After this, there was a long gap and end-stage heart patients had to go to hospitals in the southern part of India for heart transplant. After 1986, heart transplants were started in Fortis Hospital, Mulund in 2015.

A BMC health official said apart from heart and lung transplants, they also plan to have small intestine, pancreas, and liver transplant programmes too.

Dr Hemant Pathare, heart and lung transplant surgeon at Jaslok Hospital said in the past they had approached the corporation. “It is good that the additional municipal commissioner plans to have a full-fledged organ transplant programme. We are ready to train the team of doctors at the civic-run hospitals. In the past, we have approached the corporation with the hope that at least one of the four tertiary care should start heart transplant programme. However, we did not get a response.”

Pathare added that having an organ transplant programme will also help to pick up organ donations in civic hospitals.

“Ideally, municipal hospitals should have high donor rate but almost all the organ donations are happening in private hospitals. We need intensivists to pick up brain-dead patients and social workers to counsel the relatives for organ donation. However, because of the high footfall of patients and workload, the team is not able to manage. We need a dedicated team for the same,” he said.