Amritsar, December 25
The government, under pressure from social activists and the public, last week issued fresh guidelines to the registered hospitals, doctors and the authorisation committee to protect unrelated donors in kidney transplantation cases.

The Director Research and Medical Education (DRME), in a letter dated December 1, directed principals of Medical Colleges at Amritsar, Patiala and Faridkot, chairmen of the authorisation committee, to ensure that the right of the donors should not be compromised with and they should be taken care of for by the hospitals concerned.

In a bid to provide transparency and accountability, the government has directed that antecedents of the donor have to be established by way of election/ration card, salary certificate, and domicile certificates duly attested by a Magistrate/SDM or sarpanch. The donor will personally have to appear before the authorisation committee along with his spouse, parents and children to verify his intention to offer kidney to unrelated recipient. The requirement for an affidavit has been withdrawn and the onus will be on the authorisation committee to completely satisfy itself before giving its approval for donation.

The DRME has also looked into the cases of domestic help offering kidney out of “love and affection” which had been misused in case of unrelated donors. The government has issued instructions to employers of such domestic help who have consented to donate kidney should produce a police registration record as notified before employing any servant. This is done to plug the loopholes in the existing guidelines which have proved to be a major hurdle in the present case where a large number of unrelated donors

Earlier, the Principal of the medical college here and the Chairman of the Authorisation Committee, in a letter to the state government on December 4, had recommended that to curb the alleged mass corruption due to the sale and purchase of kidneys the Authorisation Committee should be given more powers by amending, if need be, the Human Organ Transplantation Act.

The Principal pointed out that was difficult to ascertain the genuineness of the kidney transplantation cases and felt that the government should either ban the transplantation from non-relatives or the verification of the donor should be subject to police verification from the place to which both the donor and recipient originally belong to.

The Principal also suggested that government should make a provision for transplantation of organ from a close relative by donating the kidney to the other blood group recipient there by solving the problem of one blood group to the other by their relative of the other recipient. He felt that this would eliminate the middlemen.

The Principal also requested the Authorisation Committee should be exempted from this duty of verification because it was not related to the government hospital or any institution. Instead everything from the start to the end was being done by the registered private hospital concerned for kidney transplantation and the authorisation committee was being made an scapegoat in this entire illegal organ transplant scandal. He also further suggested the government must authorise the state medical colleges and allow its surgeons to conduct the kidney transplantation and private hospitals should have their own authorisation committee.

According to information, 1,558 unrelated kidney transplantation cases since 1998 had been done under the Amritsar Authorisation Committee out of which only 21 were related kidney donors.

In September this year the SP, City, Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, had busted the kidney racket by arresting 12 donors and two middlemen from here. Later, an advocate, Rajan Puri, was arrested for preparing false affidavits.

What had made the entire kidney racket murkier is the alleged cover-up bid at the behest of a senior police officer of the rank of the IG to transfer the investigating officer, Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, which was exposed by the veteran social activist, Mr Satya Pal Dang, who had voiced concern and which led to the transfer of the IG to Chandigarh.