fields
A guide to fields I find interesting, with notes on why they matter and where to start.
Organ transplantation
India’s low organ donation rates contribute to preventable deaths each year. Key information for doctors, patients, and policymakers is scattered across multiple websites or sometimes not published online at all.
This section collects useful resources in one place. It’s a side project by an individual researcher—no promises about completeness or regular updates.
Research
- Consent Without Capacity: Structural Hurdles in India’s Organ Donation Ecosystem (Athavle & Gopal, ORF)
- Inequities, Data Deficiencies, and Capacity Constraints: The Challenges to Organ and Tissue Donation in India (Athavle, ORF) · PDF
What’s next
Here are essentials that we’re missing:
- An analytical framework that goes through the transplantation process sequentially—from identifying potential donors to successful transplantation. We need to decide whether to tackle issues chronologically or focus on missing elements in the policy pipeline (datasets, research, proposals).
- A review paper with a coherent typology of the problems. The field lacks a systematic way to think about “hardware” problems (ICU capacity, specialists, cold-chain logistics) versus “software” problems (social attitudes, legal clarity, physician incentives).
- Better understanding of how doctors actually navigate legal risks. The existing literature on end-of-life attitudes among intensivists is limited and mostly based on members of professional societies.
The field needs better datasets, more research, clearer policy proposals, and stronger implementation capacity. This section tries to organize what exists so far.
Tamil Nadu government orders
Legislation and rules
- THOA 1994, 08 July 1994
- THOA Rules Amendment, TN Gazette, 15 Jul 09
- THOA Act 2011, 28 Sept 2011
- THO Rules 2014, Gazetted 27 Mar 14
Government orders
- Brain Death — G.O. No. 6
- Brain Death — G.O. No. 75
- Health & Family Welfare Department — G.O. No. 175
- Cadaver — G.O. No. 287
- Health and Family Welfare Department — G.O. No. 288
- Health and Family Welfare Department — G.O. No. 289
- Cadaver — G.O. No. 296
- THOA 1994 — G.O.(Ms) No. 330
- G.O.(Ms) No. 331
- THOA 1994 — G.O.(Ms) No. 341
- TRANSTAN Permission to Function — G.O.(Ms) No. 379
- Formation of TRANSTAN, ROTTO and SOTTO — G.O.(Ms) No. 396
- KMC Skin Grafts, Rotary Sun City — G.O.(D) No. 403
- Private Hospital Participation in Cadaver Organ Transplantation — G.O.(Ms) No. 87
- Memorandum of Association
Appointments
- Appointment of Dr. P. Balaji — G.O. No. 163
- Appointment of Dr. R. Kanthimathi — G.O. No. 965
- Appointment of Public Information Officer, 27.01.2020
Meeting minutes
- Kidney Transplant Consultants Meeting, 28.07.2018
- Liver Transplant Consultants Meeting, 29.09.2018
- Chennai ROTTO and SOTTO Meeting, 10.12.2018
- Heart & Lung Meeting, 22.12.2018
- Liver Transplant Consultants Meeting, 03.05.2019