Eye Donation Awareness Programme at Applied Materials There are about 1.5 million people who today are unnecessarily blind. The only way their vision can be restored is by corneal transplant. But eye banks across the country are facing acute shortage of eyes. Much of this is due to lack of awareness among the people hence the day we celebrate our freedom, we thought to promise freedom to these people from darkness. As part of this event, a seminar was organized by Sankalp volunteers at Applied Materials on 11th September 2007. Dr.Mona and Dr. Abhijeet, well-known Ophthalmologists from Lions Eye Bank were invited to come and present the seminar. 14 employees attended the Seminar with 2 of them pledging their Eyes. Both Dr.Mona and Dr. Abhijeet were excellent in answering queries and questions related to Eye Disorders. Though the response to the event was not as expected, it gave us an opportunity to figure out exactly what went wrong in our campaign running into the event and thus prepare ourselves for future events in a better way. This event also helped us to evolve a better strategy to involve 3rd party organizations in our events
Organ donation is not restricted to soldiers only. Their families, too, are contributing to the noble cause. Take Major Sidharth Malik, a gallantry award winner for counter-insurgency operations.
He and his wife Nidhi lost their 18-month-old son, aptly named Shaurya, in a tragic accident in Secunderabad last December.
"But I and Nidhi wanted to make Shaurya’s brief life meaningful. So, we told the doctors we wanted to donate his organs," said Maj Malik. The toddler’s two kidneys were fused together to save the life of a farmer from coastal Andhra Pradesh, while his eyes were donated to an eye bank in Hyderabad.
"We are proud to be Shaurya’s parents," said Major Malik, whose wife, incidentally, gave birth to a daughter just 10 days ago.
The liver of Sawai Singh, in turn, was transplanted into a ailing soldier with "decompensated cirrhosis". While one kidney went to a IAF Sergeant’s wife suffering from "an end-stage kidney disease", the other was handed over to AIIMS, where it was transplanted into a patient with chronic kidney failure. The corneas came to the aid of two other suitable recipients.
All this was done under the aegis of the Armed Forces Organ Retrieval and Transplantation Authority (AORTA) at the Army Hospital (Research and Referral) in New Delhi.
"It’s sad that organ donation in India is only 0.05% per million population, whereas it’s as high as 30-40% in some countries. Since AORTA came into existence in January, we have done five major multi-organ donations so far," said Colonel (Dr) A K Seth on Friday.
"We have also started a donor register for people to pledge their organs. Over 500 Army personnel and their family members have come forward to join the initiative so far," he added. And the message seems to be spreading in the 1.3-million strong armed forces. var RN = new String (Math.random()); var RNS = RN.substring (2,11); var b2 = ' '; if (doweshowbellyad==1) bellyad.innerHTML = b2;