Pushing organ donation programme forward in Asia

With Asia lagging behind the rest of the world in the field of organ donation and transplantation, the Indian Society of Organ Transplantation (ISOT) is organising a midterm meeting in Chennai for its promotion.

The theme of the meeting, which will begin from 16 to 18 March, 2017 at The Park in Anna Salai, is 'Asian perspectives on organ donation and transplantation.'

The chief guest is Dr J. Radhakrishnan, IAS, Secretary to Government, Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Tamil Nadu. Dr Anant Kumar, President, ISOT will preside over the function.

Asia does 4 to 5 per million live and deceased donor kidney transplants compared to 27 in Europe and 46 in USA, although 60 percent of the world population lives in this large continent.

The current meeting will get the best of Asian perspectives from leading countries in the field.

In India there has been an increase in living and deceased donation over the past five years and so it has been in countries such as China, Korea, and Iran to name a few.

The current meeting will have perspectives from all these countries, as well as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The highlight will be a display of selected artworks from Iran's unique art initiative to promote deceased organ donation and transplantation by the Iranian Society of Organ Donation.

More than 2700 artworks were received that consisted of 897 graphic art, 781 paintings, 361 sculptures, 330 photographs, 166 cartoons, and 239 illustrations. Selected artworks were displayed at the 1st Nafas Visual Art festival in August 2016.

Iran has made tremendous progress in deceased-donor organ transplants. The transplant team at Shiraz began performing more deceased-donor kidney and liver transplants and became a successful deceased-donor organ transplant model in the country.

In 2011 and 2012, Iran was ahead of all country members of the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation in performing deceased-donor kidney and liver transplants.