Emphasising on the need to build awareness and a roadmap to overcome challenges towards cadaver donation, Institute of Medicine & Law (IML) organised ‘MODE – Make Organ Donation Easy’ and released a Whitepaper on organ donation.

The Whitepaper captures the deliberations of the 5th National Convention on Medicine & Law that emphasises on various aspects of cadaver donation - from the challenges faced by doctors (grief counselling, alternative tests), caregivers & patients waiting for an organ, to the need for streamlining organ donation and transplantation activities at state & central level. It also sheds light on the legal definition and government's role in the cadaver donation process.

Addressing the medical aspect of the discussion Dr Sunil Shenvi, Senior Consultant Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery and Multiorgan Transplantation said, “To increase the number of organ donations further, awareness is the key. To achieve this, we need to increase awareness not just amongst public but also amongst Medical and para medical practitioner.”

Elaborating further Mahendrakumar Bajpai, Advocate, Supreme Court of India Standing Counsel, The Medlegal Attorneys Editor, Medical Law Cases – For Doctors, Hon Director, Institute of Medicine & Law said, “The nation today needs a central law on uniform definition of death. Many countries are following the same as per WHO guidelines. The Registration of Birth and Death Act, which is currently in the process of getting amended, should include brain-stem death as a form of death.”

“At Gift your Organ, we have been trying to create 360-degree awareness of organ donation across cities since many years. In my experience as a first step, to make India self-sufficient for organ donation, the statutory processes and procedures should be simpler and easily implementable along with appropriate grief counselling,” added Deepak Jumani, Director – Awareness Drives, Gift your Organ.