On 20th August 2021, a joint initiative of MOHAN Foundation and Community Medicine of Sassoon Hospital conducted a webinar on the topic “Organ Donation - the need of an hour.” This session was conducted as a part of an awareness program in celebration of Organ Donation Week.
Dr. Yallapa Jadhav, Associate Professor at Department of Community Medicine, BJGMC, Pune welcomed everyone and explained that the webinar will focus on organ donation awareness. He then presented a PowerPoint presentation on the topic- ‘Need for raising organ donation awareness.’
Dr. Jadhav began by sharing the need for organs and the statistics around accidents in which thousands of lives are lost every month. He also went on to highlight India’s poor organ donation rates in the world scenario. He shared the state-wise organ donation scenario in India and highlighted the uneven distribution of the programme. He touched upon the legislation and legal aspects and problems in organ donation programme. He covered the types of organ donation, age limit for donating organs, and how one can become a donor. He then explained in brief MOHAN Foundation and its on-going efforts in circumventing the problems.
Dr. Pradnya Bhalerao then presented on the topic ‘Brainstem Death and Clinical Testing.’ She explained the concept of brain death, the need to establish brain death, its causes, clinical evaluation and brain death diagnosis. She also explained the cortical functions, absence of brain stem function, pupillary reflex, corneal reflex, oculocephalic reflex, vestibular-ocular reflex, gag and cough reflex, apnoea test, interpreting the test and ancillary confirmatory testing.
Mrs. Aarti Gokhale of ZTCC Pune, presented on ‘Organ donation Awareness Activities and Role of ZTCC’, She covered the formation of MCFOT in Maharashtra and origin of ZTCC, its objectives and functions, process of registration for all organs, awareness activities and importance of taking awareness to social media.
The next speaker Dr. Sheetal Mahajani elaborated the topic ‘Current Perspective on Organ Donation - myths and facts’. She spoke on what is organ donation and solid organ transplantation, transplants in mythology, history of liver transplant, types of transplantation, who can donate organs, living donors and deceased donation, procedure of organ procurement and the myths in cadaveric donation.
Thereafter, Dr. Kiran Kumar Jadhav was invited to speak on ‘Regulations of Organ Donation.’ He explained living donation, brain death and its declaration, role of authorised committee, working guidelines for the authorization committee and authority of medical practitioner.
Lastly, Mrs. Jaya Jairam of MOHAN Foundation spoke on the ‘Role of NGO’. She touched upon the various awareness initiatives undertaken at Sassoon Hospital, how MOHAN Foundation has uniquely adopted a 360 degree approach so as to work with multiple stakeholders, in order to increase the organ donation rate in India. She shared about capacity building by MOHAN Foundation in education and training, success stories and impact on deceased organ donation rates in India and about MOHAN Foundation’s national organ donation 24x7 helpline, various apps developed by MOHAN Foundation for the public and paramedics. She also spoke about the continued efforts of MOHAN Foundation to get organ donation clause included in the driving License. She then touched upon unique awareness initiatives undertaken by MOHAN Foundation – such as ‘Life before Ashes’- an award-winning travelling exhibit and lighting up of national monuments in green (colour of organ donation) in various cities. She also shared about Anudaan - Making transplants affordable, MOHAN Foundation’s latest initiative to provide financial help to the needy who cannot afford life-saving organ transplants.
Close to 45 participants from Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Government Medical College and Sassoon General Hospitals, Pune attended the webinar. Ms. Jairam thanked BJ GMC for inviting MOHAN Foundation and all the participants for supporting the cause of organ donation.
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