Patients' fates hang in the balance as state officials meet today to discuss whether Hiranandani Hospital and its transplant coordinator should be barred from the cadaver donation and transplant list
Today is a crucial day for Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital and several of its patients who are urgently waiting for kidney or liver transplants. Senior state health officials confirmed to mid-day that the hospital may be barred from all transplant lists.
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A meeting between officials from the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC) and the Directorate of Health Services will decide whether the hospital should be allowed to continue as a member of the organ donation and transplant list. They will also decide on the membership of the hospital’s transplant coordinator Nilesh Kamble, who was arrested two days after the kidney racket was busted. While the hospital has already been barred from carrying out live organ transplants (kidney or liver transplant from live donors), it is still a recognised cadaver donation centre. This could change today.
A senior official said, “Both Kamble and the hospital are still on the cadaver donation membership list of ZTCC. It will be unfair on our part to allow these names to be on the list, as it sends the wrong message to the public.”
“We will decide upon the removal of the hospital’s name from the list of cadaver donation centres – it will depend on a unanimous decision by the committee. We will also discuss how to ensure that patients already on the waitlist for cadaver transplants don’t go through any hardship,” said one of the committee members.
“As per our records, we have so far provided 17 kidneys and 10 livers through cadaver donations to Hiranandani Hospital. Nearly 167 kidney patients registered with Hiranandani hospital are on the transplant waitlist, and there are 10 liver transplant requests from the hospital. However, not a single heart transplant case is registered there.”
Trust broken
The Powai police, who are probing the kidney racket, have claimed that Nilesh Kamble had been associated with the hospital for the last few years and had managed to gain the confidence of senior doctors and even patients’ relatives.
One of the Hiranandani doctors who was arrested said, “I trusted Nilesh Kamble and it was a mistake.”
A senior surgeon at Hiranandani hospital told mid-day, “Kamble was so good in his work and his approach that he would even provide the contact details of charitable trusts and to arrange funds for poor patients undergoing treatment at the hospital. Donors and recipients who would come to the hospital for transplants would always have a word of praise for Kamble.”
The police further claimed that during a search of Kamble’s house, they recovered Rs 8 lakh — the same amount he allegedly had accepted in return for turning a blind eye to forged transplant documents.
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