NEW DELHI: Over 80,000 Central Reserve Police force (CPRF) personnel and their family members pledged to donate their organs, the paramilitary force announced in a webinar on Friday on the occasion of Organ Donation day.
The force added that it has joined hands with the Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation (ORBO) at AIIMS in Delhi for an organ donation campaign ‘e-sanjeevani’.
AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria also spoke at the webinar stating, there is a ‘huge gap’ in the demand and supply of human organs for transplant in the country and the myths prevalent in this domain must be busted to ensure that lives are saved by timely availability of vital body parts.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan also attended the event and exhorted people to come together for this noble cause, saying it was time for everyone to “bust the myths” and realise that the act of donating organs is not against ‘religion or religious customs.’
“There cannot be a bigger godly work than organ donation,” the Union minister said.
The chief of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Dr Guleria said that the institute was working to “very soon” start a lung transplant programme even as it has facilities available for transplantation of heart, kidney, liver, pancreas, cornea, heart valve and bones. Guleria added that “in future a skin bank will also be operational” at the AIIMS.
“I am sure a time will come when there is no shortage (of donated organs) and people will not die while waiting for an organ,” Guleria said.
Vardhan said India has worked hard in the path of organ donation in the last few years and the country is at the third position in the world but still many people in the country die due to unavailability of organs.
While in Spain there were 48 organ transplants per 1 million population, in India the figure was less than one, the minister said.
The AIIMS director, too, cited data to emphasise the lack of awareness about organ donation in the country.
The senior pulmonologist said every year one lakh cornea are required but only 50,000 are collected.