The hospital network is finally starting to run, says Mr. Raghuram Kuppuswamy, CEO of MOHAN Foundation, Hyderabad. Five years back, he set up an organ sharing  programme among 10 hospitals which a   licensed for organ donation. In case of an organ donation, the organs are shared among the hospitals to improve the chances of finding a suitable recipient patient and to get a bigger focus on the transplant program. This formula has started to work now. For the last few months, all hospitals are indeed calling MOHAN Foundation in case case of a brain dead patient. “We go there    of organ donation in the case of brain death, says Raghuram, if the family gives consent, we arrange everything for the transplant to be carried out.  Sometimes MOHAN Foundation even gets calls from hospitals that are not a part of the network when there is a brain dead case. If possible, the body is shifted to a licensed hospital to perform the retrieval. Also, more and more calls and visits are coming from people who are willing to donate their organs, or need information on how to get on a waiting list for an organ transplant.

 The increased awareness may be due to the different activities that MOHAN Foundation has been carrying out in the last few months. Mr. Raghuram has been asked to participat  in a number of TV programmes to share his experiences, especially after an organ donation has taken place. Newspapers have also covered this extensively. MOHAN Foundation has given several presentations in companies to create more awareness on organ donation. The biggest activity was the street campaign during the Global Organ Donor week, celebrated all over the world from August 8 to 14. During this week, volunteers of MOHAN Foundation placed a kiosk at different places in Hyderabad to spread information    organ donation through brochures and donor cards. Also, a survey was carried out on the knowledge and attitude among the public towards organ donation. This survey indicated that more than half of the people were not familiar with the concept  of organ donation, and very few people (< 5%) knew about brain death. On the other hand, over 80% is willing to donate his/her organs after explanation of the concept. This shows that it is still of huge importance to create more awareness among the public, because at this moment an enormous amount of organs is being wasted because of a lack of awareness.

Nevertheless good stories can be told as well. On August 15, 2007, Independence day, MOHAN Foundation received a call from SVIMS Hospital in Tirupati. There was a brain dead patient and the family came forward to donate the organs. As the hospital only recently got the license to perform transplants, they called MOHAN Foundation fo  help in the procedure. Their first organ retrieval was successful and the donated kidneys  went to patients in NIMS hospital in Hyderabad and CMC Hospital in Vellore. At the moment MOHAN Foundation is developing a training programme for new transplant coordinators, set up in association with MOHAN Foundation Chennai. The  way of counseling is extremely difficult in situations of grief, so transplant coordinators should be well trained in approaching families in an appropriate way. Gradually, organ donation will get its right   place in Indian society, Mr. Raghuram says. There is still a long way to go, but w  are on the right track.

Statistics of organs distributed in Hyderabad