The deceased organ donation and transplantation programme in India showed an encouraging upswing in 2012. Concerted efforts by the central and state governments, NGOs, government and private hospitals and very importantly, public support for deceased organ donation have borne fruit. A total of 530 organs were retrieved from 196 deceased organ donors from across the country resulting in a national organ donation rate of 0.16 per million population for 2012. This is double the national organ donation rate in the previous few years, which stood at 0.08 per million population. It is heartening to see that deceased organ donation is now happening in the western and northern regions of India as well as in the southern regions.

Tamil Nadu continues to lead the table with an organ donation rate of 1.15 per million population. In fact, Chennai city's organ donation rate is 14 per million population, which is comparable to the organ donation rate in Netherlands, Poland and Denmark (Source - WHO Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation 2010). Taking a leaf out of Tamil Nadu's book, Kerala has also brought out a set of Government Orders for deceased donor organ transplantation. A workshop was held in this regard in August 2012 in Trivandrum with the launch of “Mrithasanjeevani” and the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (www.knos.org.in).

The way forward is to develop infrastructure in government hospitals, conduct Continuing Medical Education programme for medical and paramedical personnel, and train transplant coordinators. It is also important for each hospital and region to evolve its own standard operating procedures on how to identify and certify brain deaths and how to tackle medico-legal cases that constitute the bulk of donations in India.