JASWANT SINGH GANDAM / RAMAN NEHRA
India Post News Service
PHAGWARA: On the penultimate day of the 34th ‘National Eye Donation Fortnight’, activists of various social, religious, educational and voluntary bodies September 7 took out a rally in Phagwara to spread awareness among public for eye, blood, organ and body donation. Punarjot Welfare Society, an NGO wedded to the mission of ‘Corneal Blindness Free World’, and blood donating bodies played a stellar role in organizing it.
Punarjot Society’s International Coordinator UK-based NRI Ashok Mehra disclosed that a large number of youths took part in this what he described as ‘walk for giving gift of light and life”.
The awareness rally started from Blood Bank building in local Guru Hargobindnagar and, passing through various parts of town, concluded at the starting point.
NGO stalwart Malkiat Singh Raghbotra, area activists Sunny Badhan, Manu Banga, Aman Basra, Hardeep and Bhogal, Sagar Chaddha were among the participants.
During the fortnight which concluded September 8, Punarjot volunteers, led by its founder Dr Ramesh, held a series of statewide seminars in dozens of educational institutions of Punjab, addressing thousands of students and staff members.
According to Ashok Mehra, the program of seminars began from August 25 and continued till September 8 for spreading awareness of donating eyes, blood, organ and body.
Rallies and talks also marked the fortnight.
People were told that eyes can be donated within six hours of someone’s death while blood can be donated every three months.
On a concluding day, Dr Ramesh, Ashok Mehra and Subhash Malik urged the government to include topic of organ donation in +2 class syllabus for awakening students in their formative years.
Besides, the desire for a donation of organs should be recorded in one’s license like other countries, they said.
They also underlined the need of giving detailed information about organ donation to the police during police training so that willing families could easily donate organs of victims of accidents by completing legal and post-mortem formalities at the earliest with the help of police.
Eye specialist Dr Ramesh, who is the director of Punarjot Eye Bank, Ludhiana, has so far done 5,000 corneal transplantations free of cost at his Superspeciality Eye Care and Lasik Center Ludhiana, said, Mehra.
As many as one lakh pledge forms for eye donation had been secured so far, he informed.
“However, as per official figures, only 60,000 eyes are donated annually in India but the number of A Grade Corneal blindness patients ran into several lakhs, thereby necessitating much more eye donations”, added Mehra.
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