The Human Organ Transplantation Act 2026 creates a legal route for "emotional" or altruistic donors outside the close family to give organs. Specialist doctors and Supreme Court lawyers expect it to reduce the number of patients going abroad for kidney and liver transplants and to cut costs. Only hospitals approved by the government may carry out transplants.
Any healthy, mentally sound living person may donate an organ to a close relative if doing so will not disrupt their own normal life, and altruistic donors may do the same on the same conditions. An altruistic donor must be over 18, mentally sound, free of financial inducement or pressure and a long-standing acquaintance of the recipient, with a recommendation from the designated committee; drug users and anyone acting commercially are excluded. The relative or altruistic-donor condition does not apply to eyes, skin, tissue and bone marrow.
To declare brain death, a person must generally have been in continuous coma for a clear reason for at least 12 hours; for children aged 2 to 13 an EEG must monitor them for at least 12 hours. The declaration is made by a committee of at least three specialists in medicine, critical care, neurology and anaesthesiology, none of whom, nor their relatives, may be involved in the transplant. Deceased donors must be 2 to 70, living donors 18 to 65; recipients 2 to 70, with priority for those aged 15 to 50.
Section 18 bans buying or selling organs, taking any benefit in exchange and advertising them. Giving false information about a family relationship, or inducing someone to, carries up to two years' rigorous imprisonment or a fine of up to Tk 5 lakh; other breaches carry up to three years or up to Tk 10 lakh. A convicted doctor loses registration, and a hospital where an offence occurs can lose its transplant permission and have its licence suspended.
Professor Dr Md Mujibur Rahman Howlader, pro vice-chancellor of Bangladesh Medical University (BMU) and chair of the altruistic donor committee, said BMU carried out its first kidney transplant from an altruistic donor on 10 August and has done six liver transplants free of charge with government funding. A liver transplant needs about 150 bags of blood and costs about Tk 30 lakh, he said; if that is available at home, why would people go abroad?
Barrister Rashna Imam, a senior Supreme Court lawyer who argued the writ for the emotional-donor provision, told BSS that the narrow definition of donor used to allow only close relatives. The High Court allowed screened emotional donors and ordered the law amended, and the new act is the result. Properly applied, she said, it will bring a positive change in organ donation.
Photo: A.M.R. / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)
Source: RTV Online
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