On December 17, 2017, MOHAN Foundation was invited to conduct a session on organ donation at Organisation of Malayalee Association (ORMA), Sector 3, Faridabad. The session was coordinated by Mr. K Suresh from ORMA. The resource person for the training was Ms. Mareena Thomas, Programme Officer, MOHAN Foundation. The session was the result of general body meeting where the members felt the need of awareness among its friends and families. A mailer was circulated to all the members of ORMA requesting their presence along with their family for the session.
At the beginning of the session Ms. Mareena asked the participants if they have ever heard of organ donation or brain death or about an organ donor card. While many had heard about organ donation, very few had ever heard of the term brain death Ms. Mareena took them through the entire presentation and then opened the house for questions and clarifications.
It was a very enthusiastic and interactive group. Some of the questions asked were: After my death who gets the organs? How do the counselors convince a family that believes in life after death? For how long are the organs kept alive after brain death? Which are the hospitals in Faridabad that have the systems in place for organ donation? What are the procedures for eye donation?
Ms. Mareena clarified that when a family agrees for organ donation, the hospital where the patient is admitted gets to transplant one kidney and one another organ if they have a matching recipient for the same in their hospital waiting list, while the rest of the organs go to the common pool and are allocated according to the state’s waiting list of patients. With her experience on counseling the families of brain death patients Ms. Mareena shared that she had never had any family expressing a concern of not having an organ in the next birth if they donated in this one. She shared that families have more real concerns such as – Who would the organs be allocated to? How much time will the entire process take? Or how would the body look after organ donation?
It was also shared that organs cannot be stored and every organs has a specific time limit from the time they are retrieved from the deceased body and transplanted into the recipient’s body. The government website, www.notto.nic.in, that has names of the hospitals that have a deceased donation programme in Faridabad were also shared. The process to carry out eye donation was also explained.
In the end Mareena also requested the participants to organize such awareness session in their respective workplace as awareness is the key to increasing the organ donation rate. The session ended with the thank you address by Mr. Suresh who also ensured that dully filled Form 7 by interested participants will be posted to MOHAN Foundation so that there name is included in the national registry.
There were around 100 participants and nearly 80 donor cards were picked up.
-ACT,-2011.gif){kind=spacer}
