Organ Donation Day To Be Celebrated On August 7th By PGI in Chandigarh, India

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research's (PGI) department of renal transplant surgery will be celebrating Organ Donation Day on August 7th, in an effort to boost organ transplantation in Chandigarh.An organ awareness camp has been organized by the department in the OPD block from 10am to 2 pm where the general public will be briefed about the concept of brain death and organ donation. Also individuals who wish to donate their organs after death will be educated about the importance of organ donor cards and can also register during the period.

Also talks regarding the deceased organ donation will be given in the institute by various faculty members of the institute. All the families that donated organs last year will be  honored by Vijay Kumar Dev, UT adviser. Organ recipients will get an opportunity to share their journey from illness to recovery, the agonizing wait for an organ and how their lives were transformed after transplant towards the end of the meeting.

The problem of low donation rates can be easily overcome as the willingness to donate organs among people is rising, say doctors in the field of transplantation. Not only among the common people the awareness of organ donation is lacking but also to some extent among the medical fraternity.

Each year in India about 4,000 organ transplants are carried out for a population of 1.2 billion whereas for a developed country like the US, which has about 1/3 of India's population, does about 5 times more number of organ transplants than India.

Since July 3, 1996 PGI has started deceased donor transplant. And the number of deceased donor transplants has steadily increased to about 20 per year, over the last few years.

The PGI has also initiated liver and heart transplants along with the ongoing kidney transplant program. Pancreas transplant program was recently started by the department.

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Source-Medindia