New Delhi, Aug. 25 -- India has drawn up standard operating procedures (SoPs) for organ swaps, seeking to widen access to transplants amid a severe shortage of donor organs. The framework will allow donor-recipient pairs who cannot undergo a transplant because of blood group or tissue mismatch to exchange donors with other-through a coordinated national registry, according to two government officials and a document reviewed by Mint.

The framework has been developed by the health ministry's National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (Notto), which coordinates organ donation and transplantation. It aims to eventually expand beyond two-family exchanges to multi-family chains, liver-for-liver exchanges and combined kidney-liver swaps,...