On August 27, 2016, MOHAN Foundation was invited to Bhatnagar International School, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi to conduct an awareness session on organ donation for the teachers of the school.
Bhatnagar International school is a modern and progressive institution, right from its inception in 1990 it's a vision translated into reality with a mission to create leaders, winners and achievers in a global world. It embodies the very philosophy of the founder Dr. V. K. Bhatnagar to shape up and mould students in such a manner that they are dedicated to the cause of the overall progress of the society, blending traditions with progressive change.
Ms. Anuradha Gupta, (Accounts teacher, Class XI & XII) took the initiative to organise the session. She takes care of the community service activities in the school.
Dr Muneet introduced the foundation and its objectives to the participant. Ms Chaitanya began the session by asking the teachers the question why there is a need of organ donation and in reply, one of the teachers quoted the tag line of the foundation, “Gift of life, Pass it on”. They were shown the statistics that showed the huge gap between demand and supply of organs in our country. It was then explained who all can be organ donors, and what can be donated after cardiac death and brain death. It was found that none in the audience had clarity about what brain death is. According to them, a brain dead patient is in coma and is alive. The 5-minute video on brain death was shown in order to provide teachers with better understanding of the concept of brain death.
Dr Muneet further explained that how the whole concept of organ donation revolves around brain death. She added if people know what brain death is, it would be a lot easier to counsel the families for organ donation.
Ms Chaitanya explained the other remaining concepts like how brain death is established, THO Act, contraindications to organ donation, etc. Lastly she discussed the myths.
After this, a lot of questions came up like whether targeted donation is allowed, if laws can be made flexible to encourage this cause, does the identity of donor and recipient revealed to the families, etc. These were handled by the resource persons present.
A total of 25 teachers attended the session and 10 donor cards were picked.