MOHAN Foundation attended and participated in the 13th Congress of the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement (ISODP) at Seoul, South Korea from October 17-20, 2015.The Congress was titled “From the end, to the start”. Dr Sunil Shroff (Managing Trustee) and Ms. Pallavi Kumar (Executive Director, NCR) represented the Foundation.
Dr Sunil Shroff was invited to present in a Round Table discussion in which he shared perspectives from India on deceased organ donation. The other countries represented in the discussion were China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. Dr Shroff presented the current status of deceased organ donation in India, the government initiatives, state wise progress on donations and some of the main challenges to the success of the program.
Ms. Pallavi Kumar made a presentation under the poster session on Education and Communication on a new project launched by the Foundation called “Angels of Change – Volunteers for Organ Donation.” Under this initiative, select student volunteers from schools and colleges are taken through a customised training module to enable them to undertake awareness initiatives on organ donation amongst various audiences. The objective of this program is to engage the student volunteers - duly sensitised and trained as agents of change - and make them efficient enough to conduct public awareness on organ donation.
Dr. Sunil Shroff also presented a study done by the Foundation on the ‘Demographic profile of those who skip the vital talk after taking an organ donation pledge’ The study was undertaken with online pledgers on the MOHAN Foundation website and the objective of the study was to study the profile of online organ donor and to find out who informs and who does not inform the family about their wish to donate after filling the donor registry and to explore the reasons for the same.
The mission of the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement (ISODP) is to foster, promote and develop all aspects of organ and tissue donation and procurement. The ultimate aim is to increase the supply of high quality organs and tissue to match the need. ISODP is a section of The Transplantation Society (TTS) which is an international forum for the world-wide advancement of organ transplantation.
The congress had a stimulating scientific programme consisting of 3 pre-congress workshops, a keynote lecture along with 4 plenary sessions, 4 early morning symposia, 2 round table discussions with a debate session as well as oral and poster presentations.
Internationally recognized speakers from the field of organ donation and transplantation gave excellent talks on the latest issues and recent researches in the field. Some of the topics covered were:
- Safety in organ and tissue donation
- Vascularized Composite Allograft
- Donation after circulatory death
- Organ allocation policy
- Donor Risk Assessment
- Ethics in organ donation
The Congress was attended by over 400 delegates from across 40 countries.