Day: October 5, 2015

Categories
Deal with it

Mumbai gets registry of organ donors

IMA Kalyan ties up with LH Hiranandani Hospital to compile data about voluntary organ donors and also record their consent letters.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

This one’s a great initiative to increase the numbers of organ donors in the city.

Indian Medical Association (IMA), Kalyan has come up with a plan with LH Hiranandani Hospital to create a voluntary registry of organ donors with details of people who are willing to donate their organs and their consent letters. The registry will contain the consent letters of those willing to donate their organs and their health status along with other details.

At the moment, about 7 kidney donations happen every month, and about 4 liver donations. These numbers need to be much higher – for this, more awareness is essential. During a recent programme at the hospital, around 350 doctors and more than 500 people came forward from various walks of life to give their consent letters to join the registry, said Dr Anjum Syed, President, IMA Kalyan and gynaecologist attached with various hospitals in the region.

Traffic police, volunteers and others signed up to donate organs for the initiative

Heart Transplant surgeon Dr Anvay Mule said “There are thousands of patients who are waiting with hope. Such activities are required to create awareness and increase organ donation.”

Elaborating on the organ donation scenario in India, Dr Syed, said, “Figures show that India’s current organ donation is 0.05 per million populations (about 50 cadaver donors per year). The number of transplants per year is in the range of 3,000 to 3,500 with barely 5% coming from brain dead patients. The annual requirement is about 1, 50,000 donations. However, if we can improve it even to 1 per million donations, we could take care of some of the organ shortages in India. At 1 per million donation rate, we would have 1,100 organ donors which could take care of almost all current demands for organs in India.”

“The rate of renal transplants in our country is actually quite dismal, as more than 1,00,000 patients are waiting for renal transplants, and less than 5,000 happen every year. It is much worse for cadaver transplants as less than 1,000 happen per year. In comparison, Mumbai city does less than 300 renal transplants every year, of which only 30 to 40 will be cadaver donations. So the people requiring dialysis has steadily gone up, putting a lot of strain on the infrastructure to accommodate all these patients,” added Dr Syed.

ORGAN DONATION KIDNEY LIVER LUNGS CORNEA HEART
LIVE ORGAN DONATIONS FROM 1995-2015 8,061 202 – – NA
CADAVERIC (FROM BRAIN DEAD PATIENT) 546 150 2 19,285 (from June 2006 to June 2015 3

 Requirement in Mumbai and Thane

KIDNEY LIVER LUNGS CORNEA HEART
2800 210 – – 10

Source: Maha Arogya Seva Mandal, Thane

“Aiming at increasing the number of donors by creating awareness on organ donation is required. From increasing the current 5,000 to lakhs and more, IMA Kalyan has joined hands with many private hospitals to spread awareness on importance of organ donation. This is the first step to reach among the educative society,” says Dr Syed.

Dr Pravin Shingare, ZTCC committee member, added, “Our aim is to remove misunderstandings among public regarding organ donation.”

(Featured image courtesy zeenews.india.com)

Categories
Little people

New age parenting: Frantic WhatsApp messaging

Parents are increasingly using WhatsApp to keep in touch with other parents and discuss their children. But is this wise?
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

The red light on my phone flashed, indicating a new message on WhatsApp. It was a joke:

Mother: So what did you do in school today?

Child: Why are you asking? Didn’t your WhatsApp school group tell you what happened in school today?

It didn’t make me smile. Is it true that we are discussing our kids too much on social networking sites? It is possible that we have forgotten to draw boundaries around what we should and should not discuss.

My son’s school ends at 3 pm every day and he is home by 3.30 pm. This is when my WhatsApp mommy group gets super active. It starts with questions about homework and what happened in school, then takes the familiar path to criticism and gossip about everything their children tell them. I don’t think any of these mothers cuddle their tired kids after a day at school – instead, they whip out their phones and start a post mortem of the school day.

Sometimes I feel that technology has brought us too close. I take care not to respond too often, but I do read all the chats carefully. Many times, this makes me question my own parenting skills. The other mothers know so much more about school and what their children do, than I do about mine. The parent-teacher meets further make me question myself. The other mothers have so many questions to ask, while I have to rack my brains to ask even one. Most of my interactions with my son’s teacher end in a minute. I can feel the eyes of the other mothers on me; they must think I am a bad mother, that I don’t even have a question about my son.

This charges me up to behave like them for a few days, prompting my horrified son to put his foot down and say philosophical things about his rights. Better sense prevails and I realise that too much intrusion in my son’s life can curb his freedom.

My kid sure knows his rights – the other day, I stopped him from doing something and he protested and said children also have a life and that I was stopping him from living that life. I was taken aback – I had always thought I was a great mother who encouraged him to enjoy his childhood in every way. And here he was, hinting that I was a dictator.

It’s true – we often don’t let our children do the things they want to do. Instead we tell them what they should do and discuss them obsessively over social media. I don’t any of my son’s classmates but I know so much about them from the WhatsApp chats. This makes me uncomfortable – would we like it if our children discussed our shortcomings on social media chats? Parents compare their own children to others, they put up homework pics, compare handwriting and even laugh at their own children’s foibles. Is it fair to laugh over a child’s shabby scribbles?

All children learn to read, write, speak and add sums eventually. Every child learns. How would we feel if our children revealed our salary statements, discussed how we were about to lose our jobs, our medical profile on social media? If that’s not okay, why do we think breaching our children’s privacy is?

I think all parents need to let schools do their jobs. We need to interfere less, keep our anxieties to ourselves, let our children learn at their own pace. They have their childhood just once in life, let them enjoy it to the fullest. Take a deep breath and don’t burden your child. Also, put away your phone and use that time to be with your children. Talk to your children, don’t discuss them with others.

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