An awareness program on organ donation was organized by GNM Training Centre Mangaldai on Friday. They organized the program in collaboration with voluntary organizations Crystal Vision of Mangaldai and North East Care Foundation of Guwahati.
Dr Sarbeswar Sahariah, the eminent organ transplant super specialist and Padmashri recipient was the chief guest of the occasion.
Speaking at the program he said, “Every year we need around one lakh organs for patients waiting for transplantation. But we hardly get five percent of it. It means we fall short by 95 percent of the organs needed. In our country where organs are cremated or buried, has recorded untimely deaths of nearly 6,000 people every day waiting for organ transplant. Every seventeen minutes someone dies waiting for organ and in every thirteen minutes someone is added to an waiting list.”
He is the first surgeon to successfully carry out kidney transplant in India way back in seventies.
Dr Sahariah spoke at length about the brief history of organ transplant in the world and India to the alarming amount of casualties due to acute scarcity of cadaver (patient with brain death) organ donors in the country .
The number of donors among one million people on an average is less than one. Diabetes and high blood pressure are two major factor of organ failures. He urged people to help in this regard.
He said. “No one can actually understand the crisis of organ donors unless their dear ones face a situation of organ failure.” he added. He stressed the need of public awareness on this serious subject and urged the trainee nurse, senior nurses, nursing faculty members, doctors present to study it and gather knowledge so that they can help the society.
Dr Sahariah also interacted with the participating student nurses and answered their queries. He presented a short film on the real stories of some organ donors including that of sixteen month old ‘Sourya’, the youngest organ donor in the world of whom transplantation was successfully carried out in the Hyderabad based medical institute “ KIMS ”.