On 30^th December 2019, MOHAN Foundation delivered an awareness talk at Punjab Association’s Maharani Vidyawati Devi ITI for Women – a tailoring unit housed in premises of Gill Adarsh School in Royapettah, Chennai. The audience was a group of 16 female students of sewing technology and embroidery. Ms. Ishwarya Thyagarajan and Dr. Hemal Kanvide from the Foundation were the resource persons.

The session started off with the participants filling out a survey on awareness about organ donation. Ishwarya began her talk with the importance of blood and eye donation. Most of the audience was fairly familiar with the subject of organ donation and brain death, and mentioned that movies and other visual media were their information source. A participant shared that her uncle, who had recently undergone a liver transplant with his daughter donating, was no more. Another mentioned that one of her relatives was on dialysis after both his kidneys failed, is waiting for a transplant.

Ishwarya then spoke on the following topics in detail:

• Organ failure and causes
• Circulatory and brain death
• Difference between brain death and coma
• Types of donors
• Organ and tissue donation while living and after death
• Hand and uterus transplants
• How are the donated tissues used
• Age criteria to donate organs
• Importance of family consent in organ donation process
• The organ donation process in hospital
• Transplant waitlist, organ allocation and TRANSTAN
• Transplantation of Human Organs Act
• Myths and misconceptions around organ donation
• Whole body donation

The audience was a highly interactive group, eager to know more. Two of the signed up to be organ donors and rest promised to have a discussion with their families. A few questions raised by them include:

• How is the cornea retrieval done?
• What happens during post-mortem?
• Is it possible for a living person to donate skin?

MOHAN Foundation is thankful to Mrs. Nirmal Bhasin and Punjab Association for the opportunity.