Myths & Facts
Almost nobody refuses organ donation because they have weighed it up and disagreed. They refuse because of something they heard, and never had the chance to check.
If you only read one thing on this page: your doctors are not told about your pledge, donation is only considered after death has been independently certified, and nobody pays or is paid. Almost every fear people have traces back to one of those three points.
Myths about how you will be treated
Fact: The team treating you has no idea whether you have pledged. Pledge records are not attached to your hospital file and are not visible to emergency or ICU staff.
Beyond that, the separation is built into the law. The doctors who certify death cannot be part of any transplant team, and donation is only raised after death is certified. The two processes are kept apart precisely so this fear has no basis.
Fact: Brain-stem death must be certified by a board of four doctors, including a neurologist or neurosurgeon and a medical administrator, and none of them may belong to a transplant team. Two complete sets of tests are carried out six hours apart.
Brain-stem death is not a coma. A coma is a state someone can recover from. Brain-stem death is the irreversible loss of brain-stem function — the person cannot breathe unaided and will never regain consciousness. The heartbeat continues only because a ventilator is supplying oxygen.
Fact: There is no upper age limit. Organs have been successfully donated by people in their eighties, and corneas are usable from almost any age. Suitability is judged on the condition of the organ, not the year on a birth certificate.
Fact: Very few conditions rule out donation completely. Common conditions like diabetes, controlled hypertension or a past illness may affect which organs can be used, not whether you can donate at all. Even people who cannot donate organs can often donate corneas or tissue.
Please do not rule yourself out. Pledge, and let the doctors assess at the time — that is their job, not yours.
Myths about religion and the funeral
Fact: No major faith practised in India prohibits organ donation. Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism all permit it, and most treat the saving of a life as among the highest acts available to a person. Religious leaders across traditions have publicly pledged their own organs.
If this is a genuine question for you rather than a worry, we would rather you asked someone within your own tradition than took our word for it. Call the helpline and we will try to put you in touch.
Fact: Retrieval is a surgical operation performed with the same care and the same standards as surgery on a living patient. Incisions are closed, and the body is returned to the family dressed and prepared.
Every funeral rite — cremation, burial, open casket, viewing — can proceed exactly as it would otherwise. Corneal donation leaves no visible change at all.
Fact: Retrieval usually adds a matter of hours, not days, and hospitals understand that many Indian traditions require the funeral to happen quickly. Coordinators work to that constraint. If a delay would be unacceptable to your family, say so — it is a legitimate consideration and it will be respected.
Fact: This belief is genuinely held and deserves a respectful answer rather than a dismissal. Scholars across Indian traditions have generally concluded that the body after death is not the person, and that dāna — selfless giving — extends to the body.
That said, this is a question of faith rather than medicine, and it belongs with your own family and religious teacher. We will not pressure anyone on it.
Myths about trafficking and the queue
Fact: Organ trafficking exists in India and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But it operates through illegal living donor rackets — coerced or paid donors, faked family relationships — not through deceased donation.
Deceased donation is centrally allocated by NOTTO and the state networks against a waiting list. Organs are matched by medical urgency, compatibility and waiting time. The way to weaken trafficking is to increase legitimate deceased donation, which is what this Foundation works on.
Fact: The waiting list is maintained by the government network, not by hospitals, and allocation follows published medical criteria. Wealth does not move anyone up it.
What money does affect is access to the system in the first place — being registered at a transplant centre, affording the surgery and the lifelong immunosuppressant medication afterwards. That is a real inequity in Indian healthcare, and it is a separate problem from allocation.
Fact: The donor's family pays nothing towards retrieval or anything connected to the donation. Equally, no payment may be offered or accepted in return for organs — doing so is a criminal offence for both parties under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act.
If anyone ever offers your family money in connection with a donation, that is a crime in progress. Report it, and tell us.
This one is a myth in the opposite direction, and it is the most damaging on the page. A pledge in India is an expression of intent. It is not legally binding, and your family will still be asked to consent at the time.
If they do not know what you wanted, they may well say no. A donor card in a drawer that nobody knows about achieves close to nothing. Tell them.
Answered your question?
If something here still does not sit right, call the helpline and talk to a person. We would far rather answer a hard question than collect a pledge from someone who is not sure.