Can anyone save seven lives without being a doctor? Difficult to believe, but a second year student of Osmania Medical College, Samagna, did just that.
If even 10 per cent of the organs were harvested from the thousands of road fatalities in Andhra Pradesh. some 15,000 people needing organ transplantations could be saved every year. Special chief secretary (health and family welfare) J Satyanarayana says this can be achieved only by spreading awareness about organ donation Organ donation. And this can mainly be done by private hospitals and NGOs.
A workshop to upgrade skills of transplant coordinators while handling sensitive issues related to organ transplantation was organised by Mohan Foundation on Friday.
Tamil Nadu's recent experience with the cadaver transplantation programme came in for commendation at a recent meeting of World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives in Geneva, where they discussed strategies for the 4D programme (Developing Donations from Deceased Donors).
When it comes to organ donation, experts have been of the view that public awareness and the inclination to donate organs are the biggest hurdles. However, a recent survey by an NGO has revealed a surprising fact.
It is general consensus that Tamil Nadu's cadaver transplantation programme has received a fillip in the last two years. But much more can be done in terms of retrieval of organs from brain dead patients. Spreading awareness of cadaver organ donation is being recommended as a key intervention to scale up.
When the doctors at KG Hospital in Coimbatore declared a 38-year-old road traffic victim brain dead on Saturday, the state cadaver transplant registry in the state recorded the 100th cadaver organ donation since its inception in October 2008. In the last two years, the registry has networked with over 500 hospitals in the city besides hospitals transplant centres across the country.
The 100th regulated cadaver organ transplantation was concluded on Sunday morning at the Government General Hospital.
In a few days from now, duo K. Raghuram and Lalitha Raghuram of Mohan Foundation, will reach a milestone of facilitating 500 organ transplants from 92 donors.
