On May 16, 2016, MOHAN Foundation was invited to Hindu Senior Secondary School, Nuh Mewat, to conduct an awareness session on organ donation for students from standard 9th - 12th. Nuh Mewat is a rural area 40 kms away from the city of Gurgaon. The talk was organized and coordinated by Mr. Gaurav Singla who is an accounts teacher at the school. He got to know about MOHAN Foundation through news broadcast in Zee news where MOHAN Foundation was mentioned in connection with coordination of an inter city heart transplant case. He then contacted the Foundation’s office in Gurgaon and enrolled himself as an organ donor both with MF and NOTTO and then convinced the principal to arrange a talk at their school. Mr Balbir Singh, Principal, Hindu Senior Secondary School also supports the cause of organ donation. The school has been for a very long time trying to search an organization or a person who would give them proper information about the cause and that is when they got to know about MOHAN Foundation.
Ms. Mareena Thomas Programme Officer, MF, Delhi-NCR took the session for the students of standard 11th and 12th and Ms. Chaitanya Jonker, Transplant Coordinator, MF took the session for standard 9th and 10th. The session started with Mr. Balbir Singh introducing MOHAN Foundation and the need to know about organ donation. The resource persons tried to clarify few basic facts about organ donation to the children. One was brain death and coma is not the same. A person in coma is legally alive and can feel pain, while a person who is brain dead is dead and the state is irreversible. They were also told about the simple steps that should be followed in a case of eye donation – it should be done within 6 hours of death, the nearest eye bank or National Eye Bank should be contacted. The other precautions to be taken include switching off the fan and switching on the air conditioner, covering the eyes with moist cotton and raising the head. All the students were urged to go back and speak about organ donation and eye donation in their family.
“Can we donate our kidney to our friend in the case of living donation?” asked a child. Mareena explained though the provision for unrelated donation is there in the law but such cases need to take permission from the state authority. She also explained that even in the case where the donor and the recipient are related under the law, a committee ensures through series of test and interviews if any coercion or monetary pressure was involved or not. The law is designed in such a way to avoid any form of organ trading.
MOHAN Foundation always had difficulty in getting into the rural areas for awareness session. Very recently there was a case where Ms. Chaitanya had counseled a family of a brain dead person from Nuh itself. A poor Muslim family, they were convinced of the cause of organ donation but were afraid to give the consent fearing the reaction of the people from their village and doubted if their religion would allow organ donation. Under such a light this session was a ray of hope for MOHAN Foundation where we touched somewhere in the rural area. Mr. Balbir Singh and Mr. Gaurav Singla were very happy with the response and promised and assured MOHAN Foundation that they would organize more such awareness talks specifically focusing on getting Muslim influential people in Nuh. Nuh Mewat is a Muslim dominated area and they have had experiences where people even shun the idea of blood donation. One of the reasons for abysmally low organ donation rate in North India is the lack of awareness and we hope that this session would open the gates to more such sessions in other rural areas in and around Gurgaon, so that the message of organ donation could reach the masses.
300 students attended the sessions and 15 donor cards were given to the teachers.
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