KOLKATA: West Bengal Health Minister Dr Sharadwat Mukherjee, a registered medical practitioner by profession, has urged people not to donate their bodies after death while encouraging organ donation, prompting strong protests from members of the medical fraternity.
Addressing a programme on eye donation in Salt Lake on Thursday, Dr Mukherjee said, “Body donation is not a necessity. Bengali enthusiasts of our state often say that they have decided to donate whole body. I would like to request you don’t do this please.”
He said, “Organ donation is a necessity but not the body donation. Former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had also donated his body but it’s of no use.”
The health minister’s remarks triggered controversy on Friday, with social activists involved in the movement promoting body donation after death and doctors opposing his views.
Sudipta Raha of Ganadarpan, a non-governmental social organisation that has been promoting body donation in the state since 1986 for medical education and research, told the media that the purpose of the two types of donations is not the same.
“Both types of donations are necessary. Each medical college requires around 10 to 14 bodies every year for its students. During workshops, government medical colleges look for donated bodies after deaths, while private teaching hospitals demand more,” Raha said.
According to the National Medical Commission (NMC) recommendation, every 10 medical students need at least one body during the undergraduate MBBS course.
Medical students benefit from donated bodies, while ailing patients can get back their lives after receiving cadaveric organs.
Organ donation is carried out after the brain death of a patient due to an accident or disease. Organ donation differs from the donation of a body after death. The heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and eyes can be extracted from the body of a brain-dead patient and donated to save another ailing patient who requires any of these organs.
Experts in the anatomy department in medical colleges in the city said the health minister’s remarks urging people not to donate body after death are very unfortunate and unscientific in medical education.
Donated bodies are used for students in anatomy department laboratory. Every first-year student in MBBS course requires to undergo dissection process of bodies in anatomy laboratory.
A professor in anatomy of a premier government medical college in the city said, “Medical education is incomplete if any undergraduate medical student does not learn about anatomy, in which dissections of bodies are taught. Donations of both bodies and organs are necessary. The NMC has made it mandatory for every 10 medical students to require at least one body.”
