Dhalewadi village has an organ donor in every family

PUNE Dhalewadi village, in Purandar taluka of Pune district, has by registered at least one member from every family in the village to be an organ donor

PUNE Dhalewadi village, in Purandar taluka of Pune district, has by registered at least one member from every family in the village to be an organ donor.

Volunteers on the organ donor registration drive in Dhalewadi. (HT)

Within two days the village saw 350 donors registered, which has raised the organ donation numbers for the Pune zone, said officials.

The Pune Zonal Transplant coordination committee, which covers nine districts, was able to register only 100 donors a month. This has now gone up to 450 donors in a month, thanks to this village.

Aarti Gokhale, central coordinator, Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee, said, “Even if we try to persuade people by actually visiting the person’s house, we could not get even a 100 organ donors registered in a year in the entire zone. However, with this one village registering close to 350 organ donors in one day our numbers have pushed higher. Due to the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we were not able to carry out awareness camps and distribute our forms. This is why we launched our QR code, the first of its kind in the state, which made it easier for people to register as organ donors by just scanning at the code. Since its launch in June, we were able to get close to 100 donors from the entire zone until now, and within the two days that this village started registering donors - on both August 13 and August 15 - we could get 350 donors registered and the count in Pune zone went up to 450.”

Vandana Kalane, gram panchayat member from the village said, “We will not stop at just 350 and we will be registering each and every member for organ donation. We have about 250 families and a population of 1,500 in the village. With this we have at least one member from every family registered as an organ donor. In addition to just filling out forms we also have two members who signed as witnesses. Although the donor has willingly registered, after the death a family member has the right to deny despite the registration. By registering all the eligible members in the villages, anyone aged between 18-80 years, we will also create awareness among all to be registered as donors so that even after a person is brain dead the organ donation process can be smooth.”