Chennai, May 31 (BPNS)
The Madras High Court on Friday (May 31, 2024) said that medicare was a huge business and that a thorough probe must be done on Organ Transplant Authorisation Committees on the approvals given so far in Tamil Nadu.
Justice GR Swaminathan of the Madras High Court was delivering his judgement on a writ petition filed by a 30-year-old Railway employee who had been advised by his nephrologist, to undergo kidney transplant at the earliest.
The Judge said that the petitioner’s wife and other near relatives came forward to donate their organ but it could not materialise due to incompatibility. He found a non-near relative donor but their joint application was rejected.
While going through the rejection order, the judge found that the authorisation committee had approved many other applications received from popular corporate hospitals in the city but rejected the petitioner’s application alone as the nephrologist who referred the petitioner was from a not so popular hospital in Chennai.
Justice Swaminathan directed the committee to reconsider the application in the light of his previous verdict that donor’s consent must be accepted at face value unless there was evidence to prove money/money’s worth having changed hands.
The single bench judge of the Madras High Court observed that there were reasons to believe that organ transplantation applications submitted through big corporate hospitals were being approved without assigning any reason while the applications received from lesser known private hospitals were being withheld or rejected.
“That is why, I called for a uniform liberal approach (in a judgement delivered on Thursday in a similar batch of cases filed by donors and recipients seeking approval for kidney transplantation). When suffering is common to all, the status of the hospital and the patient should be immaterial,” the judge wrote.
