Transplants – India Records Historic Organ Transplant Growth Amid Persistent Gender Gap in Living Donations
Transplants – India achieved a record number of organ transplants in 2025, but official data also highlights a continuing imbalance between male recipients and female living donors.
India’s organ transplant programme reached its highest annual total in 2025, according to the latest report released by the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) under the Union Health Ministry. While the overall increase in transplant procedures reflects expanding access to life-saving treatment, the data also points to a significant gender disparity in living organ donation. Women continued to account for the majority of living donors, whereas men received most of the transplanted organs.
Women Continue to Lead Living Organ Donations
The report shows that women represented 68% of all living organ donors during 2025. A total of 11,316 women donated organs compared with 5,298 men, who made up the remaining 32% of living donors. In contrast, men accounted for 12,903 transplant recipients, representing 78% of all living organ recipients. Women received 3,707 living donor transplants, or 22% of the total.
Kidney and liver donations remained the most common forms of living organ transplantation in the country. The data also recorded one case in which a woman donated a portion of her small bowel to a male member of her family during the year.
Kidney and Liver Transplants Show Similar Pattern
Kidney transplantation continued to dominate India’s transplant activity. Among living kidney donors, women contributed 8,835 donations, accounting for 71% of the total, while men made 3,656 donations, or 29%. On the recipient side, men received 9,656 kidney transplants, making up 77% of recipients, whereas women received 2,835 kidney transplants, representing 23%.
A comparable trend was observed in liver transplantation. Women accounted for 2,480 living liver donations, or 60%, while 1,642 donations came from men. Male patients received 3,248 liver transplants, representing 79% of recipients, while 871 procedures, or 21%, were performed for women.
Kidney transplants remained the largest category, contributing 62.03% of all organ transplant procedures carried out in India during 2025. Liver transplants followed with a 20.46% share.
India Sets a New Annual Record
The country’s transplant programme reached a new milestone with 20,138 organ transplants completed in 2025. This represents the highest annual total ever recorded in India. Compared with 2024, when 18,911 procedures were performed, the figure increased by 6.5%. It is also more than four times higher than the 4,990 transplants reported in 2013.
The steady rise reflects continued expansion of transplant services across the country, supported by improvements in healthcare infrastructure, organ donation awareness, and coordination systems.
Deceased Donor Programme Continues to Expand
Organ transplants involving deceased donors also registered strong growth over the past decade. The number increased from 837 in 2013 to 3,526 in 2025, marking more than a fourfold rise.
Deceased donor kidney transplants reached 1,986 in 2025, compared with 1,918 in 2024. Earlier figures stood at 1,635 in 2023 and 1,541 in 2022, indicating consistent annual progress.
Living donor kidney transplants also increased to 12,491 in 2025 from 11,558 in the previous year. Earlier totals included 11,791 procedures in 2023 and 10,164 in 2022. Liver transplant activity followed a similar upward trend, rising to 5,154 procedures in 2025 after 4,901 in 2024, 4,491 in 2023, and 3,920 in 2022.
Mixed Trends Across Other Organ Transplants
While kidney-pancreas transplants declined to 26 procedures in 2025 from 37 in 2024, small bowel transplants showed notable improvement. A total of 23 small bowel transplants were performed during the year, compared with nine in 2024. The corresponding figures were 16 in 2023 and three in 2022.
The report also noted growing public participation in organ donation. Since the launch of the national digital pledge portal in 2023, more than five lakh people have completed Aadhaar-verified organ donation pledges. According to the programme, a single deceased organ donor has the potential to save up to eight lives.