INAUGURATION OF MOHAN FOUNDATION’S NEW OFFICE & CONVOCATION OF THE 1ST BATCH OF TRANSPLANT COORDINATORS – 11TH APRIL 2010 World Health Day, which was celebrated on 7th April 2010, had as its theme “1000 cities – 1000 lives.” As part of this campaign, public spaces in cities across the world will be used to promote health activities and stories of 1000 urban health champions will be collected.
The theme has a direct bearing on the work that MOHAN (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network) has been doing since 1997 with the Deceased Organ Donation Programme. We work in cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, but we have also been on the road talking about organ donation to people in various towns in Tamil Nadu. This year, we are taking the campaign to New Delhi and Coimbatore. And our champions are all the deceased organ donors and their families.
As part of our efforts, we have also crossed a major milestone in December 2009 with the country’s first one-month Transplant Coordinators Training Programme. This is a big step in making a difference to the deceased organ donation and transplantation scenario. So far, there has been no structured training available for transplant coordinators in the country. The Govt of India in its recent gazette has made transplant coordinator nomination mandatory for a hospital to be registered as a transplant centre. This would mean that any one of the 300 to 350 hospitals applying for renewal of its license would need a trained transplant coordinator. In 2008, the Government of Tamil Nadu issued an order to 54 transplant centres in Tamil Nadu making this post compulsory.
We recently signed an MOU with the Dean, MMC/Government General Hospital, and one of our Transplant Coordinators has been placed there since February 2010. In this period she has had almost 90% success when she has made a request for organ donation to families of brain dead people.
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