Karnataka High Court: Dismissing the petition filed by “Fortis Hospitals Ltd.”, a global brand in health care services, who was aggrieved by the decision of authorities concerned that petitioner conducted a transplantation of pancreas without certificate of registration for transplantation of pancreas which is violative of the provisions of the Transplantation of human organs and tissue Act, 1994, the Court affirmed the aforesaid order and observed that there is a dispute whether the hospital has applied for registration for transplantation of pancreas and held that certificate of registration is issued in favour of petitioner and was granted permission for performing organ transplantation of (1); kidney (2) liver (3) homograft only, not pancreas. The Court held that by mere grant of registration for transplantation of liver which is one of the abdominal organs, it cannot be presumed that permission for transplantation of other abdominal organs is also given such as pancreas. The Court further emphasised that as per the definition of the ‘human organ’ contained in Section 2(h) of aforesaid Act, it only refers to a particular organ and do not conceive of grant of registration certificate in respect of all abdominal organs without specifying organs.
In the instant case where respondent’s wife was suffering from severe diabetes and renal failure and needed a kidney and pancreas transplantation, during the transplantation, respondent’s wife died due to abnormal bleeding and sepsis, the counsel for the petitioner contended that as per Rule 9C(B) of Transplantation of human organs Rules 1995, transplantation of liver and other abdominal organs categorized as one category as experts required for the transplantation of liver are same in the transplantation of abdominal organs.
The Court also held that it is necessary to separately specify the name of the organs because nature of the organs, infrastructural requirement for transplanting such organs, are matters of consideration while inspecting hospitals and facilities made available by them. Fortis Hospital Ltd., v. The Principal Secretary, 2014 SCC OnLine Kar 6040, decided on 25.11.2014
