Chennai: Organ donations from brain-dead patients in Tamil Nadu touched 88 in 2026, with two more on Tuesday at govt hospitals in Erode and Dharmapuri, pushing March’s total up to 29, according to state transplant authority TRANSTAN.While six out of 10 donations were made at govt hospitals, 73% of the donors were victims of road traffic accidents. The state’s push to let non-transplant govt hospitals harvest organs has expanded the pool, while state honours for donors boosted awareness, said TRANSTAN member secretary Dr N Gopalakrishnan. Until Monday, kidneys topped the list at 153 from 86 donations, followed by 70 livers, 27 hearts, 27 lungs and one each of pancreas, small bowel and hands. Data from the two donations on Tuesday is still being integrated. Under the chief minister’s health insurance scheme, nephrology admissions jumped from 206,000 cases in 2022 to 298,000 in 2025, with kidney-related cases rising from 22.6% to 28% of total admissions. TN has 121 private hospitals besides govt centres approved for kidney transplants. “Survival rates and low costs drive uptake,” said Dr Gopalakrishnan, who is also a senior nephrologist. Most come from live donors, with 1,200 to 1,500 renal transplants yearly.Despite waiting lists, there are only 30 and 32 approved hospitals to perform heart and lung transplants respectively. Most hospitals in the list are inactive. Low availability of patients within the short window and high cost play a role in the numbers. Heart transplants can cost anywhere between 20 lakh to 40 lakh compared to 2 lakh to 8 lakh for renal transplants. “Hearts must be transplanted within four hours. Sometimes there is no fast intra-state transport to bring the organ into the city,” said senior surgeon Dr KR Balakrishnan.Pancreas and multi-visceral approvals dwindle to 20 hospitals. “Small bowel transplants, among medicine’s most complex, demand prolonged care,” said Dr Anil Vaidya, whose team performed 40 transplants between 2021 and 2025. The complications scare patients and other medical teams, he added.
