On May 10, 2018 MOHAN Foundation was invited by Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), East of Kailash to conduct an awareness session on organ donation. Ms. Mareena Thomas, Programme Officer was the resource person for the session. She was accompanied by Ms. Anindita Sabath, Transplant Coordinator, MOHAN Foundation for the session. The session happened with the initiative of Sharon Ayesha Tully, Events and HR Manager, FIAPO. The session took place in the conference room of Samarthanam Trust of Disabled.
Ms. Mareena started her presentation by giving a brief introduction of MOHAN Foundation and its major activities. She shared about the role of MOHAN Foundation in organising awareness programmes on organ donation, training transplant coordinators and also its role in the advisory committee for organ donation.
She then spoke on the concept of organ donation, when can organs be donated, who can donate organs and most importantly why is it important to donate organs. She shared statistics of organ donation rate in India and how the demand for organs far outstrips the supply. A clear explanation of the concept of brain death was imparted to the participants. However, there were a lot of questions raised by them regarding brain death. To clarify their doubts, Ms. Mareena showed an educational video on brain death which gave the participants a better understanding. She then spoke on eye donation, the myths and misconceptions among the general public regarding organ donation and the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994.
The presentation was followed by an open house discussion were the participants posed questions related to the topic. Some of their queries were as follows:
1. How is brain death different from coma?
2. When the heart is still beating in the person, how can he/she be declared dead?
3. What is the importance of donor card?
4. When we have already pledged to become organ donors, why is it important to take the consent of the family members?
5. Are organs of an unclaimed body donated?
All the queries were well addressed by Ms. Mareena. It was an interactive session as there was an equal participation of all the listeners. They discussed the topics and responded actively to all the questions. The fact that coma is different from Brain death and a person in coma is alive while the other is dead was the major eye opener for the session.
The session ended with a motivational video on organ donation. Close to 30 staffs of FIAPO attended the session and equal number of Form-7 was picked up.
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