The State government is planning to launch deceased donor liver transplantation programme at Government Medical College Hospital (MCH) here in December, Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar said.
The programme will be first launched with the existing facilities and then scaled up in phases.
Liver transplant surgeries, both living and deceased donor liver transplants, are currently done only in private sector hospitals in the State and are unaffordable because of the huge expenses involved.
Mr. Sivakumar said that the government planned to make liver transplant options available to people at less than Rs.10 lakh. The government had already allocated nearly Rs.7 crore for the purchase of the necessary high-end equipment and for creating separate liver transplant intensive care unit at the medical college.
More investment in infrastructure, human resources, and facilities could be done in phases so that eventually the MCH could evolve as a referral centre for multi-organ transplants, he said.
Mr. Sivakumar was addressing a workshop held here on Thursday. The workshop was held as part of a training programme on liver transplantation for the faculty of the MCH led by world-renowned liver transplant surgeon Mohammed Rela of Global Hospital, Chennai.
Head of Medical Gastroenterology at MCH K.R. Vinayakumar said the hospital was entering into partnerships with select private sector hospitals for sharing the expertise so that it could start the liver transplant programme. The faculty here would gain more expertise on the job and could undergo training in other centres also, he said.
