Several private hospitals in Bengal are not keen on facilitating cadaver organ donation in the absence of reimbursement for hospitals that harvest organs of a brain-dead person, doctors said on Tuesday.

In Calcutta, the private hospital where the organs of a dead patient are retrieved does not gain monetarily. So, hospital authorities are not interested in organ donation, the doctors said.

The doctors were speaking at a seminar on cadaver organ donation at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital.

The Maharashtra government has built a corpus by collecting a token amount from recipients so that hospitals are reimbursed and they stay interested in the exercise, the doctors said.

At the seminar, Arpita Lahiri, a member of the State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation, said the health department was trying to introduce the practice of reimbursement in Bengal so that private hospitals do not feel discouraged.

The seminar was held at the new auditorium of Calcutta Medical College and Hospital on the occasion of Aesculapia — a three-day annual fest — to spread awareness on organ donation among doctors and medical students.

Arindam Kar, the director and head of the critical care department at CMRI, who moderated the seminar, brought up the matter of reimbursement.

“After brain death, the period of harvesting organs can stretch up to 24 hours or 48 hours depending on the donor’s age. This exercise is not free of cost,” Kar said. “Some of it is taken care of if the transplant and harvest take place in the same hospital. But what if the transplant is in some other hospital?”

Kar said transplants might not take place in the same hospital because the recipient could be in some other hospital or the hospital that harvests organs does not have a licence to carry out transplants.

“If the hospital is not provided some sort of monetary support for harvesting organs of a brain-dead person they will not show any interest in declaring a person brain dead and that he/she is a potential case for cadaver organ donation,” Kar said.

Sudipta Mitra of Peerless Hospital & BK Roy Research Center spoke in favour of reimbursing hospitals for popularising cadaver organ donation.

Lahiri said the absence of reimbursement posed a challenge. “They (cities like Mumbai) have built a corpus with help from recipients.... We are looking into the possibility of starting such a practice here.”

Plaban Mukherjee, the head of the cardiothoracic surgery department at Calcutta Medical College, said more government hospitals needed to take part in the cadavar organ transplant exercise.

“So far, only SSKM and Calcutta Medical have the infrastructure for organ transplants. We must develop the facilities in more government hospitals. The poor can benefit that way.”