The Punjab government has approved the country’s first of its kind swap transplant plan to offer patients access to organs from donors other than blood relatives.
The Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority’s (P-HOTA) decision has elevated Pakistan to the ranks of the few nations that provide this service in the field of organ transplantation.
The P-HOTA Director-General, Prof. Asad Aslam, said that the plan was approved in a meeting chaired by Punjab Health Minister, Prof. Dr. Yasmin Rashid, on Monday. Under this plan, an unrelated donor may now give his or her organ to a recipient whose family member, in turn, would donate one organ to another patient.
“This method is successful for that whose blood group does not match within the family and requires organ donation from a stranger,” he said.
The medical community describes it as a groundbreaking development and thinks it will be a game-changer in Pakistan’s battle against illegal organ transplantation. This measure may also help reduce the number of patients who have to wait for years to arrange a donor.
“Approval of swap transplant is a milestone in the organ transplant history of Pakistan, as it will enhance the organ availability for transplantation and will be a great help for patients suffering from chronic liver and kidney disease who don’t have a compatible donor in their families,” Dawn quoted Prof. Asad Aslam as saying.
Established in 2013 as the provincial regulator, P-HOTA is the major provincial institution that oversees organ and stem cell transplantation in the province. It supervises all the approvals for donations from deceased and living people.
He said that the P-HOTA’s new scheme also reflected the mega program of the United Kingdom Living Kidney Sharing Scheme (UKLKSS) that was launched in 2007 to facilitate ‘difficult-to-match’ patients whose friends and family wished to donate a kidney but weren’t compatible match by blood group or tissue type.
“In 2019, the NHS Blood and Transplant of the UK had marked the week of World Kidney Day by hitting the 1,000th kidney transplant under the UKLKSS program,” he added.
Safety, Evaluation
“We are striving hard to build the confidence of the public on our regulations by ensuring that human tissue and organs are used for therapeutic purposes safely and ethically, and with proper consent,” the DG P-HOTA claimed.
To a question, Prof. Aslam said that the evaluation committees formed at the registered public and private sector medical institutions of Punjab were empowered to assess and recommend the donations/donors for swap transplants.
