Deceased organ donation alarmingly low in country: NOTTO report

Even as India recorded a surge in organ transplants in 2024, the latest report by the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), released on World Organ Donation Day, reveals a stark shortfall in deceased donations highlighting a persistent gap in the country’s organ donation ecosystem.

According to the annual report, India carried out 18,911 organ transplants between January and December 2024, up from 18,378 in 2023. However, only 1,128 of these transplants were from deceased donors, with the rest — over 15,500 — coming from living donors.

This puts India’s deceased donation rate at less than 1 per million population, far behind countries like Spain, which has the highest rate globally at 48 per million.

“India is third highest in the world in terms of total organ transplantation and first in terms of total living donor organ transplantation,” the report states, but it notes the growing need to shift toward deceased organ donation to ensure safety and equitable access.

The report flags the significant opportunity posed by 1.73 lakh annual road accident deaths in India, many of which could become life-saving donations if processes around brain-stem death certification and family consent improve.

Despite awareness drives, several states and Union Territories reported no deceased organ donation activity in 2024. These include large parts of the North-East (except Manipur), Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Meanwhile, states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Delhi NCR led with the highest transplant numbers.

The report calls for continued infrastructure strengthening, including the expansion of State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisations (SOTTOs), more transplant coordinators and modernised national registries.

Delhi