Have a heart gift an organ

“Death is not extinguishing the light, but putting out the lamp because the dawn has come”
-—Rabindranath Tagore

This Diwali, Manan Jain, a 21-year old from Jaipur gifted light to four families, proving Gurudev’s words true, with cadaver transplant, as his family donated his vital organs including liver, pair of kidneys and heart after doctor declared him as‘brain dead’. Organ donation from one human body can give lease of life to 8 people. But unfortunately, the rate of organ donors is very less just because of the ignorance, myths and confusion over donating organs, leaving number of patients awaiting  organ transplant across Rajasthan.

“Organ donation is the process of retrieving or procuring an organ from a live or deceased person known as a donor ,” Dr Ankur A Gupta, specialist at Medanta NIMS Liver Transplant Centre told DNA. “The process of recovering organs is called Harvesting. This organ is transplanted into the recipient who is in need of that organ. Tissues such as cornea, heart valves, skin, and bone can be donated in case of natural death but vital organs such as heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, and pancreas can be donated only in the case of ‘brain death’. These can be transplanted to those recipients whose organs are failing, giving them return to a normal lifestyle,” he added.

To promote deceased organ donation and transplantation in the state to overcome the organ shortage problem, state Health and Family Welfare department has already evolved a cadaver transplant programme.

Notably, one person dies of kidney failure every 5 minutes. This amounts to roughly 290 deaths every day due to kidney failure. These numbers suggest that alongwith awareness and adequate systems in place, people succumbing to accident-prone injuries could give a number of patients new lease of life.