The government of India In a bold move to bring in greater transparency and tackle the illegal kidney trade, while prioritising those in urgent need of renal transplant, has come out with draft guidelines with an aim to determine the criteria for receiving a kidney from a cadaver donor. Patients requiring a kidney transplant will have to register centrally by the hospital through an online process. The registration will be approved by a kidney advisory committee after evaluating the need for renal transplant. Once approved, patients will be put on "active" or "priority list" based on specific guidelines.

The patient, has to be below 65 years, will be rated by the committee by what is called an allocation scoring based on criteria like time on dialysis, age, previous history of graft failure, filed hepatitis B or C treatment.

"The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) under the Union Health Ministry has issued draft guidelines for allocating criteria for deceased donor kidney transplant. The draft guidelines have been posted on the NOTTO website and comments and suggestions have been invited to fine tune the guidelines," an official statement said.

The draft guidelines include various issues, including the recipient registration, listing and scoring system in the waiting list, allocation principles and algorithm, including criteria for urgent listing and inter-state issues.

"This initiative reflects our commitment to promote organ donation in the country. We will finalise these guidelines after we receive various suggestions and comments on these draft guidelines. Once finalised, these guidelines will go a long way in promoting organ donation in the country," Union Health Minister J P Nadda said.

A list of the government and non-government hospitals in Delhi along with the neighboring area of the NCR (Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida) have been listed in the draft guidelines.

By Premji