Organ Donation and Transplantation in India in 2019

In India, organ donation and transplant activities are managed under the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation, established per the mandate of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act 1994, as stipulated by World Health Organization guidelines.

The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation reached out to various hospitals and concerned authorities at national, regional, and local levels through E-mails and telephone calls to gather and to analyze 2019 data regarding the World Health Organization-Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation questionnaire.

In 2019, India had 550 transplant centers registered with state-appropriate authorities and 140 nontransplant organ retrieval centers. Most living donors were kidney donors (8613) or liver donors (1993). Of all solid-organ transplants, most were kidney transplants, followed by liver, heart, lung, and pancreas. There were few heart and pancreas transplants in 2019, with higher percentage of female donors (65.4% and 54.3%, respectively, n = 5633 and 1084). Of transplant procedures, there were more living donor transplants (84%, n = 10 600) than deceased donor transplants (16%, n = 2023). Among all organs, wait lists for kidney transplants were higher than for other organs.

Reporting on organ donation and transplant of 2019 from the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation, India's national registry, continued in 2020 despite the challenges of COVID-19. India has been submitting organ donation and transplant data at the national level to the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation consistently from 2013 to 2019 and is the only country in the World Health Organization South-East Asia Region to have done so, providing information from all states and union territories in India.