Organ donation for transplantation in Bangladesh

Abstract

Organ transplantation is a treatment of modern medicine and technology that saves the lives of hundreds and thousands of medically suitable end-stage organ failure patients. The first successful kidney transplantation from living-related donors in Bangladesh was successfully performed in 1982 and regularly from 1988. This was then followed by deceased cornea in 1984, and liver and bone marrow from living-related donors in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The Human Organ Transplantation Act was first passed by the parliament of Bangladesh in1999, allowing both brain death donation and living-related donor transplantations. Before the legislation of 1999, religious approval (fatwa) from religious leaders was obtained that acknowledged brain death donation and allowed deceased donation for transplantations. The existing act was revised in January 2018. From 1982 to 2017, only 1791 kidney, six liver, and 25 bone marrow transplantations were carried out from living-related donors. Deceased transplantations have not been started yet in Bangladesh. Only 5500 deceased corneas have been used for transplantation purposes. There are long-standing concerns about the lack of transplantation of the vital organs from deceased donors in Bangladesh and its impact on the increasing demand for procuring organs from living donor. On the other hand, living-related donors are very scarce. Numerous vital organ failure patients are often forced to buy organs from poor people. It creates an illegal and unethical market in human organs in Bangladesh.