Urmila Pachkar spends roughly 12 hours each week strapped to a dialysis machine. She travels three times a week for dialysis to a centre 12 km from her home. She will turn 31 in August, but her sallow cheeks and bony form give her the appearance of a teenager.
In 2013, Pachkar was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure, a condition in which the organs, each the size of a coffee mug, are no longer able to filter blood, remove waste from the body, and maintain fluid balance.
Her life now depends on someone else’s death: today, Pachkar is one of 3,375 individuals in Mumbai who are waiting for a new kidney. “It has been seven years now,” Pachkar says, referring to the time since she registered herself for a transplant.
Under Indian law, an individual can receive a kidney, or part of a liver, from a living family member or friend. They can also receive these organs from a deceased donor, called a cadaver donor. (Certain organs, such as the heart, lungs, bowel, intestine, or hands, can only be transplanted from cadaver donors.)
In Pachkar’s case, no one in her family matched her blood group. So, she registered for a cadaver donation.
Cadaver donations are only possible in the specific…
