NEW DELHI: Women do not just constitute most living organ donors, data shows they outnumber men when it comes to percentage of applicants for driving licence pledging to become deceased donors in case of fatal accidents.Ministry of road transport and highways, in Sept 2023, introduced a provision to pledge for organ donation in case of death while applying for a driver’s licence.According to data on such pledges in 2024, which was shared by National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (Notto) Saturday, 9.8% women applicants pledged to donate their organs in case of death compared to 8.9% men.Maximum 26.7% women pledged their organs while applying for driver’s licence in Delhi, followed by Odisha (21.9%), Mizoram (21%), Maharashtra (20.9%) and UP (16.8%). In terms of absolute numbers, men significantly outnumbered women as they constituted maximum applicants for driving licences.Anil Kumar, director of Notto, said the conversion rate of pledges into actual donations is yet to be known. “Since Sept 2023, some 3.6 lakh people have pledged to donate their organs,” he said.Between 1995 and 2021, the male-female ratio in terms of number of organ recipients was 4:1. Govt data shows this rate is slowly coming down. In 2022, govt told Parliament, this ratio came down to 2.3:1.According to the annual report on organ donations in 2024-25, released on the eve of Organ Donation Day on Saturday, India carried out nearly 19,000 transplants. Of them, 3,403 (17%) were carried out using organs retrieved from deceased donors or persons declared brain dead and the rest by living persons.
