Mangaluru : Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader on Saturday said the government was examining a proposal to constitute committees in hospitals that could officially declare brain dead persons.

Speaking at the Jeevanvileena Organ Donation Campaign of A.J. Hospital and Research Centre here, he said only very few hospitals now had such committees. The authorities also did not have any data about the brain dead persons in any particular locality, the Minister said. It crippled the efforts to get more cadaver transplantations done for the needy, he said.

Mr. Khader said the State government was planning to have a committee in each hospital for declaring a patient brain dead and maintaining a separate record of such persons. After such a declaration, a team of counsellors could counsel their family members about organ transplant. Such a move would make family members change their minds and agree to donate organs of deceased person to a needy recipient.

The Health Department, he said, would call a meeting of specialists and representatives of non-governmental organisations soon to discuss steps that the State government needed to take for simplifying the process of cadaver transplant.

Prashant Marla, medical director of A.J. Hospital, which had harvested organs and transplanted them in the last few months, expressed the need to maintain a separate registry of brain dead persons.

This would help the needy patients get organs if their family members agreed.

Sumana Navin from Chennai-based Mohan Foundation, which has been campaigning for cadaver transplants, said organ transplants should become a tradition. Sunil P. Shenoy, consultant urologist for the A.J. Hospital, said the hospital had taken the lead to generate awareness about cadaver transplants. He said India has huge pool of brain dead persons. Harvesting organs from this big pool can solve problem of the needy to a great extent.