Mumbai: Maharashtra leads India in organ donation with 198 brain-dead donors registered last year, followed by Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. Zonal Transplant Coordination Centres (ZTTCs) in Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur facilitate organ transport through green corridors, expediting transplants.
A notable case involved a 16-year-old boy in Mumbai, whose organs were transplanted into four patients after he became brain-dead in February 2025. Mumbai has a substantial number of patients waiting for transplants, with 4,000 needing kidneys and 2,000 in need of livers.
Awareness campaigns in various institutions are underway to promote organ donation, but religious and social barriers persist, particularly in rural areas, where obtaining family consent for organ donation remains a significant challenge. Considering the high rate of accidents in India, a better-organized system for recording and utilizing organs from brain-dead patients could increase transplant numbers significantly, according to report by Loksatta.
The rate of organ donation in India is notably low; reports from the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Programme and the Union Health Ministry show over 260,000 patients on waiting lists with only a 10% availability of organs. Many patients are on dialysis or require transplants due to other critical health issues.
Since 2019, efforts under the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Programme have focused on registration and training, yet the ‘presumed consent’ system remains non-existent. Such a system would allow legal use of organs unless a person objected prior to death, a model that has succeeded in places like Spain and Austria. Unfortunately, the sentiment that “organ donation is the gift of life” hasn’t fully resonated in India, resulting in many preventable deaths due to a lack of timely organ access.
Currently, over 200,000 patients are on waiting lists for kidney transplants, while more than 50,000 need liver transplants. Additionally, thousands await heart and lung transplants, with India's organ donation rate at just 0.5 per million, starkly lower than 49.6 in Spain and 36.1 in the US. With only 790 brain-dead donors in 2024, the gap between the need for organs and actual donors remains vast, highlighting the urgency for systemic change and increased public awareness in India.
