The health ministry has restarted an initiative to introduce necessary rules and regulations for the organ transplant act, around 15 years after the act was enacted in the parliament.
Earlier in 2012, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) prepared a draft for an updated organ transplant act, along with the necessary rules and regulations. Although the draft was submitted to the health ministry, the issue had been left pending after the law ministry raised objections saying the proposed rules contradicted the existing act.
Health Minister Mohammed Nasim held a meeting on Sunday with organ transplant specialists, doctor leaders, and senior officials of the health and the law ministry, as part of the fresh initiative for finding solutions to the difficulties of the organ transplant process.
Additional Attorney General MK Rahman, who attended the meeting, criticised the health ministry for taking two years to hold a meeting for discussing a draft that was prepared in 2012.
The health ministry would need to go to the parliament to pass an updated law, MK Rahman said, adding that there would be no need to get the parliament involved if the rules and regulations were based on the existing Transplantation of Human Organ Act 1999.
Professor Dr Harun-Ur-Rashid, head of the national committee for the formation of updated law, rules and regulation, told the Dhaka Tribune that the committee wanted to quickly introduce rules and regulations instead of updating the existing act. The previous draft for the rules and regulation has again been handed over to the health secretary for making it final, he added.
The draft proposes separate organ donation forms for donor, recipient and medical board, as well as recommending DNA tests for confirming the blood relation (parent-children) between donors and patients in the case of kidney transplants, Dr Rashid said.
However, if the donor or the recipient was an uncle or aunt in relation, they would need to bring a letter of approval from the union parishad chairman, magistrate or a city mayor.
The committee also plans to clarify which hospital and authority would be allowed to declare patients as brain dead, in an effort to popularise cadaver organ donation across the country, the committee chief said.
The proposed rules and regulations would also make it mandatory for any health facility to have at least six well-equipped beds and four ICU beds for running a kidney transplant unit, along with having at least three professors (professor, associate professor and assistant professor), doctors, nurses and technologists present round the clock, Dr Rashid added.
Professor Dr Zamanul Islam Bhuiyan, director of National Institute of Kidney Diseases and Urology, told the Dhaka Tribune that organ transplants in the country were facing setbacks for the absence of proper rules and regulations, causing the number of kidney transplants to drastically fall over the last couple of years.
Around 900 kidney transplants have been performed since 2010, while sources claimed that less than 100 of those transplants had been carried out in the last three years.
