Philanthropic initiatives to harvest cardiac pacemakers from cadavers in France and the United States for supply to patients in India may hold lessons for other developing countries and even the industrialised world, doctors involved in the efforts have said.

A report by a team of doctors of Indian origin in the US says that their experience of providing pacemakers donated by funeral homes in the US to 53 needy patients in Mumbai over the past seven years reinforces the safety and benefits of recycling pacemakers (American Journal of Cardiology doi:10.1016/j.amjcard.2011.08.036). The recycled pacemakers were donated exclusively by funeral homes after the doctors obtained consent from the deceased patients’ families.

Although some in the medical …