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A person can donate a part of his or her liver to a relative who is dying of liver failure and requires a transplant. Living donor liver transplantation is a procedure which is performed in countries like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and India where relatives are reluctant to allow harvesting of organs from brain-dead, heart beating cadavers the most common source of transplanted organs in Western countries. The main disadvantage of living donation is the risk to the donor's life. Doctors are of the opinion that unless this is less than half of one per cent the operation should not be done but a survey of the American public found that they would accept a risk to life of up to 20% to save a near relative. We felt that in India because of our closer family ties potential donors would accept an even higher risk and we were right. DoctorNDTV.com conducted a survey to find out what percentage of risk a donor was willing to take to save the life of a near relative.
We found that people were ready to take a risk of an average of 32 per cent to donate a part of their liver for their children, 28 per cent risk for their mothers, 27 per cent risk for their father and spouse and 25 per cent risk for their siblings. People in India were also ready to take 18 per cent risk for their friends.
Therefore, true to our predictions, we found that in India people would be willing to donate a part of their liver for transplantation to a near relative and friends at a much higher risk to themselves than Americans.
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HIV/AIDS
