Kerala becomes first state to issue brain death certificates

Source:Google

On Saturday, 7th April 2018, Kerala became the first state to have a Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to certify brain death instances. While SOPs are already in practice in all registered organ transplant centers in the state, this is the first time that these procedures and certifications are being documented officially as standard norms.

All government and private hospitals in the state need to follow the guidelines before declaring a patient brain dead.

“The SOP [standard operating procedure] was brought out as per the High Court directive and to mitigate public fear about the process involved in declaring a person as brain dead,” Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja said. “The government wanted to ensure that a person who is declared as brain dead has no chance to return to life”, she added.

The procedure requires a medical board comprising four doctors comprising of at least one government doctor. The procedure also says that a patient cannot be declared brain dead without being completely out of reversible causes of coma. The guidelines also give detailed definitions of brain death and the state of coma.

The government was prompted to bring the law after S Ganapathy, a physician had challenged the existing practices in the High Court, arguing for more foolproof measures to rule out possibilities that the certification is manipulated to use the patient’s organs for transplant.

Source: Scroll.in