On July 25-26, 2018, MOHAN Foundation was invited to conduct awareness sessions on organ donation for the students of Mayo College, Ajmer. Swarnendu Kumar Biswas, Training & Development Coach, Ajmer College Boys School took the initiative to organize the sessions. Ms. Pallavi Kumar & Dr. Muneet Kaur Sahi were the resource people.

 

Three sessions were organized, two were conducted on July 25, 2018 at Mayo College Boys’ School & Mayo College Girls’ School respectively. The third session was conducted on July 26, 2018 at Mayoor School, Ajmer. Students from classes X-XII attended these sessions.

 

Mayo College is a boys' residential public school in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India. It was founded in 1875 by Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo who was also the Viceroy of India from 1869 to 1872. The school is one of the oldest public boarding schools of India. The present Director is Lt Gen Surendra Kulkarni (Retd), who joined in 2015 and is the seventeenth Principal of the School. Mayo College Girls’ School was founded in 1987 and is ranked the best boarding school for girls in India. Ms. Kanchan Khandke is the second Principal of the School. Mayoor School, Ajmer was founded on July 9, 1980 under the auspices of the Mayo College General Council – a co-educational day school that functions along the lines of a public school.

 

MF resource people explained the basic concepts of organ donation and transplantation with the help of powerpoint presentations, short movies, case-sharing and discussion. The talks extensively addressed the following areas:

• Who, why, what, where and how can you donate
• Process of pledging/signing up for donation
• Brain-stem death and circulatory death
• Organ & tissue donation
• Myths with their reality checks around organ donation
• Contraindications to organ donation
• Transplantation of Human Organs & Tissues Act 1994
• Coma & brain-stem death
• Cornea donation
• Opt-in & Opt-out consent system

 

The students involvement in the sessions were evident from their eager & enthusiastic replies to the questions raised by the resource people. Students actively participated in raising their own queries and shared personal stories. To name a few:

• Brain-death is ‘almost dead’ because brain stops functioning and oxygen supply is cut off
• Difference between coma & brain-death, a person in coma can survive.
• If you donate organs, you will be born without them in the next birth, body is destroyed after death and the organs also perish.
• Only healthy organs are retrieved
• Donate organs because it is wasteful to let your organs die

 

Few of the queries raised by the students were regarding ethical & moral issues generated by the current advances in organ transplantation, the problem of organ supply versus organ demand and the appropriate allocation of available organs, importance of carrying a donor card, India adopting an opt-out system, validity of signing up as an organ donor with the help of a registered will and affordability of transplants for the poor and needy in a government set-up.

 

Close to 700 students from the three schools attended the sessions.