BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha is leading a project to raise awareness about living organ donation among Hindus in a programme funded by NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT). An organ donation conference has been organised on Saturday 28 October 2017 at BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, London (Neasden Temple) and all are welcome to attend from 12 noon.
Organ donation is the giving of an organ to someone who needs it, to save or transform their life. There are two ways of donating an organ: a living donation or a donation after death. A living donor is someone who donates an organ whilst they are alive.
The conference will bring together patients, families, medical experts, transplant teams and Hindu religious leaders to discuss their perspectives, provide practical guidance and reinforce the importance of improving organ donation rates in Hindu communities. Moving testimonies from patients waiting for or who have received transplants will be highlighted. Panel discussions will allow representatives from Hindu religious communities and medical experts to help dispel fundamental misconceptions about organ donation and motivate potential donors with the facts.
The event is part of a wider BAPS campaign to raise awareness of living organ donation within the Hindu population. An information leaflet and informative documentary exploring the experiences of Hindu donors, patients and medical opinions on living organ donation has also been produced.
Current organ donation and transplantation activity figures from NHSBT reveal that approximately 1,000 Asians (16% of the total) in 2017 are waiting for an organ transplant in the UK – the majority requiring a kidney transplant. In 2016/17 there were only 79 Asian living kidney donors and only 29 Asian donors who donated after death.
There is a particularly urgent need for kidney donors in the South Asian and Hindu communities because of high diabetes and hypertension rates – conditions that result in kidney failure.
BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, UK has been campaigning to raise awareness about this issue and encourage Asians and Hindus to sign up to the organ donation register since 2011. The latest campaign specifically aims to raise awareness about living organ donation among Hindus, addressing the anxiety and hesitation that exists about discussing this as an alternative to dialysis.
Dr Sejal Saglani, a lead volunteer for BAPS, said, “We hope that the information and experiences from patients, families and medical experts from this awareness campaign help to bridge the disparity between the number of patients waiting for an organ and the number of donors from Asian communities.”
For further information about BAPS’s organ donation drive in the UK, please visit
http://londonmandir.baps.org/forthcoming-events/living-organ-donation/
