Kidney donor: Court asks hospital to reconsider patient’s application

Now the Bombay High Court has directed Ruby Hall Clinic to process the papers required for transplantation and forward it to the regional authorisation committee at B J Medical College within a month so that the application can be reconsidered,he said.

“We tested blood groups of each and every family member but none matched,” says Kalbhor. That’s when they decided to seek permission for an unrelated donor. The Transplantation of Human Organs Act allows only near relatives to act as donors. However,section 9 of the Act states that if an unrelated person wishes to become donor,an application should be made to the local authorisation committee.

In his petition,Kalbhor had said necessary documentation was processed and forwarded to the authorisation committee and to the dean of BJ Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital,Pune,but the committee said they had stopped accepting requests for transplants from unrelated donors. The petitioner will now have to submit the documents afresh to the hospital within a week. The hospital will forward it to the committee within a month,said Advocate Uday Warunjikar,Kalbhor’s lawyer.

Dr Sujata Malik,medical director at Ruby Hall Clinic,said as a policy,the hospital did not entertain applications for unrelated kidney donors. “There are various issues that need to be resolved before unrelated donors’ kidneys are approved and we have to ensure there is no monetary transaction involved. As per the court directive,the hospital has already started processing the application,” said Dr Abhay Sadre,nephrologist,who added that kidneys can be transplanted from unrelated donors,but the applications need thorough scrutiny.