More awareness needed on organ donation

Chennai: Umar Farooque (16) was suffering from a condition called Dilated Cardiomyopathy Elemy Dysfunction and had reached a critical stage, requiring heart transplantation.

Having waited for 45 days after being listed on the Tamil Nadu Organ Sharing Registry, he received a heart and has since seen much better days. Had the family of the deceased not been willing to donate the organs, Umar and his family may not have been so positive as they are today.

Umar had this condition - which arises in one among 10 lakh individuals world wide - since birth, a factor which they were unaware of as a family. At 12, when his condition worsened, it was found that he was in dire need of transplantation. “We had to leave our village, which is 50 kilometers from Vellore, and come to Chennai for treatment. Umar was given medicines for two years and yet there was no cure. It was then that he was registered on the list for organs,” said his father Jamal Ahmed.

Following his transplantation, Umar’s family is stress free. “We now live close to Central station. He cycles to school everyday and has no problems at all. However, he has to take medicines regularly and we have to take him each moth to the hospital for Echo,” added his father.

Nephrologists and NGOs are proud of the fact that Tamil Nadu is known as the state with the lowest demand-supply gap of organs because of its high number of organ donors, due to the existence of the Tamil Nadu Organ Sharing Network. However, doctors feel that creating awareness on donating organs is still the need of the hour.

Tamil Nadu has the highest rate of traffic accidents in India (13.6 per cent of all accidents and 11.3 per cent of all deaths, according to recent reports), and many are brought to the hospitals brain dead. “Loss of organs at the Casualty level are seen to be high as doctors prefer not to waste a hospital bed on the dead,” said a Nephrologist from Vellore.

Stressing on the need to create awareness, Sunil Shroff of the Mohan Foundation said, “It is very important to educate the public about organ donation. Over the years, we have recognized that there is a greater need to educate doctors and hospitals about the same.”

“One of the main causes for organ failures has been found to be ‘marrying within families’, which increases the risk of passing on genetic abnormalities. A large percentage of those undergoing transplantation, especially in Tamil Nadu, is due to intra-family marriages,” said the Nephrologist from Vellore.