On October 12, 2015 MOHAN Foundation was asked to hold a sensitization program on Organ Donation at the country's corporate office of Intercontinental Hotels Group at DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon.

InterContinental Hotels or IHG is a British multinational hotels company headquartered in Denham, UK. Its brands include Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Even, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Hualuxe, InterContinental and Staybridge Suites.

 

The session was an initiative of Mr Prakash Nebhnani (Director Governance & Compliance and Regional Delivery Director AMEA GC, IHG). Two sessions were held, one for the morning shift staff by Dr. Muneet and Ms. Marina Thomas and one in evening for the staff at the night shift by Ms. Pallavi Kumar and Ms. Chaitanya Jonker.

 

The resource team started the session by asking few question to the participants to understand their level of awareness about organ donation. Many had heard about the concept of organ donation, but only very few aware of brain death. The team of MOHAN Foundation made the participants about the organ donation demand-supply rates in India, who all can donate organs and what all organs could be donated. The concept of brain death committee was stressed upon to make them understand how impartial the declaration of a brain death is. Myths of many of the participants were also addressed.  One of them being when a person dies only the corneas of the eyes are taken unlike the popular myth believed that the eye balls are taken.

 

Special mention was about eye donation and how each of individual could contribute at their own level for the cause. They were also given tips about the time and how to take care of the eye after a person dies so that the cornea is retrieved in the stipulated time.   The 5 minute brain death video was shown at the end of the session that made it clearer for them that brain death is irreversible.

 

The session was very interactive as the participants asked a lot of questions. They had queries regarding if the organs could be stored, what role is government playing in the field of organ donation and if the identity of the recipients is revealed to the donor family or not?

 

In the first session there were 66 participants and 45 donor cards were picked up. In the second session there were 55 participants and 27 donor cards were picked. It was encouraging and highly motivating for the MOHAN team to see how some participants took more than one donor cards either for their spouse or for others in the family.