With the ministry of health having given the green signal for allograft or the transplanting of tissues from one person to another, a major push for tissue transplant was given at the 99th Indian Science Congress by scientist Rajyalakshi Manda.
Dr Manda stressed that tissue transplanting has a long history of safety and efficacy in almost all surgical specialities including orthopaedic, spine, sports medicine, dental and cosmetic surgeries.
Based in the US, Dr Manda pointed out that the first tissue bank was set up in the US as far back as 1945. Currently, there are more than 1.5 lakh tissue donors in the US every year. Dr Manda, who is the director of marketing for DCI Doners based in Nashville, pointed out that theirs is a not-for-profit bank that works with the sole aim of helping the needy. “In the US, most of these companies work on a not-for-profit basis though they charge a processing fee,” she explained.
“India needs more tissue banks and private entrepreneurs can come forward and start these banks. But India needs to simultaneously invest in public education to let people know that such donations can impact large numbers of people,” said Dr Manda.
“In an area like this, we need to understand people’s (donors) sensitivities. We show them all the scriptures so that they can see for themselves that no religion prohibits the donation of tissues. We emphasise to them that while tissues have a shelf life of five years, organ transplants have to be done within 24 hours of the organ being taken out of the donor’s body,” said Dr Manda. She said tissue transfer can be used for bone, skin, tendons, face, cartilage and blood vessels and that the overall success rate remains very high. “The cost of this exercise depends on the rejection rate of a particular individual and costs tend to escalate only if the fall rate is high,” she said.
The other key advantage of tissue transplant is that no blood matching amongst different groups is required except in the case of the transplant of blood vessels, she added.