Organ Donation: One's Choice or Duty?

Kausar Karim*
Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.
Periodicity:February - April'2021
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jnur.11.1.17586

Abstract

Pakistan is one among those ten most populous countries in the world where the government devotes 0.8% of its GDP on public health sectors. The prevalence of renal diseases in the country is increasing at a tremendous rate. Due to limited resources, only 25% of patients with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) are estimated to have an availability to hemodialysis or renal transplantation. In Pakistan, living organ transplantation was initiated in the mid-1980s. Today, it is considered as the most preferred and effective treatment in patients with ESRD. Unfortunately, many patients with ESRD die each year due to the shortage of organs available for transplant. The patriarchal culture of Pakistan offers males to be authoritative and privileged as head of the family which makes women more vulnerable to be coerced into organ donation. In a report by the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), the incidence of female donors was identified to be significantly higher than male donors in the United States (Spital, 1998). Health care professionals play a fundamental role in such mutually exclusive situations, where living organ donation must be viewed under ethical boundaries while making decisions.

Keywords

Organ Donation, Virtue Based Ethics, Autonomy, Ethical Altruism, End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), Renal Transplantation.

How to Cite this Article?

Karim, K. (2021). Organ Donation: One's Choice or Duty? i-manager's Journal on Nursing, 11(1), 30-33. https://doi.org/10.26634/jnur.11.1.17586
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