ORGAN DONATION
Donation, Organ Donation affects more than donors and recipients. Donated organs give the recipient the opportunity of a longer and better quality of life. Happier. It also affects the families, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who love and support those in need of transplantation, and who benefit from their renewed life and improved health.
People who are on an organ waiting list typically have end-stage organ disease that significantly impacts their quality of life and may be near the end of their life. Receiving an organ can become a life-changing event for these people. A chance to a new life. A better one. It can also help a family work through the grieving process and deal with their loss by knowing their loved one is helping save the lives of others.
Every life counts. One organ donor can help multiple people and can save upto eight lives, yes, eight lives!!
It is a procedure in which a healthy organ is taken from an individual who is either living or deceased and is transplanted into a person whose respective organ is malfunctioning.
A donor will never understand the importance of donation like a recipient does, but the donor will be alive in the hearts of the recipient and his loved ones. By donating organs, you can become immortal. You see the world through the eyes you donate, your heart beats in the body of others. Even after you die you are alive in the hearts of people.
A living donor can donate a kidney or a portion of their liver to a friend or family member or even altruistically and continue to live a normal life with very little restrictions. You can donate a whole kidney, or part of the pancreas, intestine, liver, or lung. Your body will compensate for the missing organ or organ part. As for kidneys, there is some data showing that kidney donors may be slightly more likely, over the long term, to develop high blood pressure, preeclampsia, and chronic kidney disease. But the data on that is limited and mixed.
All organs after the death of the person have a certain time period until they are alive to be donated. Some organs are alive for a very little time like, if a person is brain dead then their heart can be donated within ‘only 4 hours’, that time period is very crucial for the recipient and its family. Unavailability of that organ at that particular time may cost them their life.
In India, philanthropy continues from ages, organ donation has its own importance but unfortunately, about 0.5 million people in India die every year from causes that could have been prevented by organ transplants that were not available to them. Organ donation rates in India sit at 0.01 percent. This is due to lack of public awareness, religious or superstitious beliefs and strict laws. Major religions of the world do in fact permit, allow and support transplantation and donation. Religions believe that even after the body dies the soul is immortal and your body changes in every birth so donation does not affect you in the next birth. Nut superstitions say that if you donate a organ then you will be born without that organ in the next birth. So, some people who are ready to donate their organ are taken aback from doing the good deed. There is nothing of that sort, we should not believe in these superstitions, organ donation is a noble deed there is no harm in it.
It is not just a transplant or a duty towards your society but a chance, an opportunity to save someone’s life, making it better and saving a loved one of hundreds of people.
– Samruddhi Rathi