In February 2012, a group of corporate, government and non-governmental organisations came together to sensitise their employees and members to organ donation. Many people pledged to donate their organs after death and undertook to carry a donor card.
A few weeks ago, an article in the papers spoke of a State where some organisations had created a database of those willing to donate organs and had enrolled 13,000 people within a month of their commencing the initiative. With the country facing an acute scarcity of organs for transplant, this must surely have been welcome news.
He met with an accident on his way to a funeral last week; had begun moving into his new house just a day earlier.
Shah-e-Tara Jasrotia, 64, flaunts a few words in faded green across her arm. It is a tattoo, she says, I got it years ago. Squint a little, go closer, and the text in Devnagri script on her shrivelled skin begins to gain legibility.
This June, G. Naveen Kumar would have joined a well-known private company as a trainee after being selected recently through a placement programme at his college PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore. Naveen's Facebook profile photo has the logo of the company he was to join and this speaks of the expectation this 22-year-old had of a career.
At least one-fourth of more than 19,000 police officers in the city, including commissioner J K Tripathy, have pledged their organs for donation.
Organs of a 15-year old boy, who was declared brain dead on Saturday, were donated to various hospitals in the State.
You meet these men and women mostly in grim settings. Hospitals have always been about harsh lights, sombre green walls, and a doctor in a white coat holding a stethoscope. Or even a scalpel.
It was just another awareness raising event, this time for organ donation. 'Donate life.. celebrate life...spread the word' said the press release. Usually events to raise awareness about organ donation are held at hospitals but this one was ironically at the fancy Lodi garden restaurant. I went along because the evening promised a showing of snippets of a film on organ donation, The Ship of Theseus, to be premiered at the Cannes film festival.
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit signed a pledge board on organ donation at an event held in the national capital on Wednesday by MOHAN Foundation (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network), a not-for-profit organisation working to create awareness. Several leading doctors also joined her in the pledge.
