IMA Celebrates Organ Donation with Medanta and API

In a country of 1.3 billion people, only 0.50 persons are organ donors per million population in India. To bridge this gap, Indian Medical Association, Gurgaon (IMA) in association with Medanta - The Medicity, MOHAN Foundation (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network) and Association of Physicians of India, Gurgaon (API) celebrated The Organ Donation Day as part of their ongoing efforts to increase awareness around this cause and thereby, enrollment.

The Organ Donation Day is celebrated every year to honor those who have given the gift of life through this noble act and to educate others, on the significance and importance for those in need. As a fact, each person can save the lives of up to 7 individuals and can enhance the lives of over 50 people by way of tissue donation.

Highlighting the importance of Organ Donation, Dr. A. S. Soin, Chairman Liver Transplant & Regenerative Medicine, Medanta – The Medicity said, “Around 2 lac patients with liver failure and 50,000 patients with liver cancer die in India every year. At least 15% of these patients can be saved with liver transplants, which now has a success rate of 95%. Of nearly 40,000 needed, currently only 1,600 liver transplants (75% from live donors and 25% from deceased donors) are done in India annually. This number could easily become four times if the deceased donation (from brain dead donors) rates were to become even 2/million population from the current 0.4/m. In the USA, the donation rate is 25/ million.”

In an effort to bridge this gap, IMA Gurgaon in association with Medanta - The Medicity, MOHAN Foundation and API Gurgaon will also be hosting a CME to facilitate the donors and recipients who volunteered to donate their or their loved one’s organs to save the life of others.

Supporting this cause Dr. Ashok Taneja, Member Human Organs Transplantation Board, Govt. of Haryana said, “Presence of hospitals like Medanta performing kidney, liver and heart transplant ensures that Haryana is fast emerging as a transplant state thereby, giving patients with end stage organ failure a chance of a new life. The Haryana Government is committed towards this cause. This CME is one of the steps in that direction as educating the medical fraternity is important.”

Celebrating this cause Pallavi Kumar, Executive Director, MOHAN Foundation said, “Though there has been a threefold growth in the organ donation numbers over the years, from 196 donors in 2012 to 528 last year, India still has a long way to go before it meets the current requirement. Also, this development has been skewed, with only a selected few states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh/Telangana making a progress and the rest of the country showing negligible organ donation and transplant activity. This scattered behaviour is only benefitting a few sections of the population. We therefore, need all the stakeholders to play a stronger role - be it the government at the Centre or at the state level, the hospitals both private and government or civil society organisations – to make this a mass movement. We need to educate not just the public but also the medical fraternity to create a conducive environment for families to consent for organ donation.”