The Maharashtra government on Tuesday told the Bombay High Court it has drawn a set of draft guidelines for emergency organ retrieval and donation even for hospitals that are not registered for organ transplant. The government said the guidelines will be ratified in about four weeks and a Government Resolution (GR) will then be issued notifying them.

The new guidelines will ensure, among other things, a mechanism to deal with emergency organ donation or retrieval situations even for patients who are undergoing treatment at hospitals that do not have the licenses and are not registered for conducting organ transplant. The submissions were made before a bench of Justices Naresh Patil and NW Sambre that was hearing a petition filed by a kidney patient Swapnil Raut.

Raut's plea brought to light a recent incident at a Mumbai hospital, where another kidney patient awaiting donation from a brain-dead person, also at the same hospital,
failed to get the organ since the potential donor suffered a sudden heart attack and died. The hospital could not retrieve the donor's organ after his death since its licence for organ transplant is under suspension for the last few years.

At the previous hearing, the bench had taken a serious view of the matter and said the government should frame guidelines about it. It had asked the government to constitute a team of medical experts who can intervene in such situations in the future.

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