Dalmia Bharat Limited invited MOHAN Foundation to conduct an awareness session on organ donation for its employees in their Noida branch on June 8, 2017. The talk was coordinated by Ms. Bharati Menghani from the corporate office. The session was taken by Ms. Pallavi Kumar, Executive Director and she was accompanied by Ms. Mareena Thomas, Programme Officer.

The session began by one of the employees sharing that his sister has been on the waiting list for a kidney since the last two years at the R&R Army Hospital. He shared that there was no suitable donor amongst the blood relatives and the wait has been excruciatingly long for her. This strongly brought home the acute shortage of organs in India and the plight of those awaiting a transplant. It also set the tone for the session.

Ms. Pallavi explained how the Transplantation of Human Organ Act defines who can be a living donor in terms of relation to a recipient. She also explained the provision for swap donation that the law allows which involves an exchange of organs between two families, who cannot donate the organ to their own family member because of blood group mismatch. The difference between coma, a prolonged state of deep unconsciousness where a person is still alive, and brain death, where a person is legally dead, was clearly defined. The importance of mandatory brain death committee in a hospital to declare a person brain dead was shared. The importance of discussing the wish to be an organ donor with the family was stressed upon as according to the law, after death the family’s consent is a must to be able to donate organs.

There were 25 participants and 50 donor cards were picked up.