Organ recipients at Apollo Hospitals, thank donors & celebrate new lease of life on the eve of World Happiness Day!
Hyderabad, March 19th, 2016 : Apollo Hospitals hosted a unique 'Organ Recipients' Carnival & Thanks Giving' on the eve of 'World Happiness Day' on Saturday. It was an occasion for the patients who underwent organ transplants at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad, to express their heartfelt gratitude to the organ donors' families, whose generous decision to donate the organs of their loved ones gave them a new lease of life.
Around 15 organ recipients and their families were joined by Ms Sangita Reddy, Jt. Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals; Dr. Manish C. Varma, Chief Transplant Surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad and Dr. G. Swarnalatha, Incharge, Jeevandan at the event.
For someone who has been on death bed not knowing how the next day would shape up and constantly enduring the trauma of life and death, the organ donor's family provides truly a new lease of life. This life changing episode is of boundless happiness and celebrations not only to the recipient, but his family too. There can no better day than World Happiness Day to celebrate this joy and also to extend their deepest gratitude to the donors and their families. It is a day on which every recipient would count his blessings and thank the people and events that contributed to his Happiness.
Speaking on the occasion Ms Sangita Reddy said, the organ recipients and their families have a constant desire to express their gratitude to the donor families for their munificence, because the cure of organ failure is through organ transplantation. This World Happiness Day celebration is a small effort from Apollo Hospitals in collaboration with Jeevandan to provide a forum to the recipient & families to express their gratitude to the donor families and an assurance to those families that their gesture has been instrumental in spreading happiness in the lives of so many.
We have to acknowledge Jeevandan for its tremendous contribution in this success. But there is need to raise awareness about the beauty and joy of organ donation. Every donor's family gets immense happiness of knowing that their loved one is living through four others. Till date only 10,000 people registered for organ donation through Jeevandan, by next year we should have at least one lakh registered to donaate organs, more and more people should come forward to bridge the gap of organ requirement, she said.
She herself signed and handed over the Organ Donation Registration form to Dr Swarnalatha on the occasion. She regretted that 45% of those waiting for liver transplantation pass away even before they get a liver. Today Apollo runs one of the largest organ transplant programs in the world and has teams and infrastructure producing results on par with the best in the world, Ms Sangita Reddy said.
Dr. G. Swarnalatha said, fortunate to see so many organ recipients at one place and being happy, this is a great motivation to those in the waiting list. Jeevandan has made study progress, since its inception in 2013, we got 204 donations of which 41 were in 2013, 51 in 2014 and 89 in 2015. We had done 199 liver transplants, 357 kidney transplants, 19 heart transplants and 3 lung transplants through Jeevandan. More should come forward for donations and several lives could be saved. The All India organ donation rate is 0.5 per million population. Telangana ranks number two in donations after Tamilnadu with 1.7 per million and Hyderabad 8 per million population. If we continue at this rate we can be number one. Off the five lakh accidents, 60% are brain deaths and only 10% of them are coming forward to donate organs, therefore there much greater scope. We look forward to a day when there is no waiting list for organ transplantation. We are conducting CMEs and Counsellors' training to raise the number of Organ donations. Apollo has made tremendous contribution to Jeevandan by being in the forefront in organ donations, she said.
The Organ Transplantation journey at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad is spread over 100 liver transplantations and many more kidney transplantations. Our team has had the privilege to witness the amazing journey of these patients from Disease to Health and from Despair to Hope. It is our constant endeavor to spread health and happiness through good work. The superlative outcomes of liver transplantation with over 95% success rates, which is better than the national and international average, ensures that the generosities of donor families do not go waste and we have more smiling faces at the end of the day, says Dr. Manish C. Varma.
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