A Study on Awareness and Attitude about Organ Donation among School Teachers

Organ transplantation is the last resort of saving lives in accident cases and prolonging life in many disease cases where chronic organ failure cannot be cured. However, lack of availability of organs is the main problem in this modality of treatment. In India every year nearly 500000 people die because of non availability of organs, 200000 people die liver disease, 50000 people die of heart disease. 150000 people await kidney transplant, but only 5000 get one. 1000000 people suffer from corneal blindness and await transplant. In view of the “The transplantation of human organs act”, passed in 1994, voluntary donation remains the only way for availability of the organs. Willingness rate of Indians to donate organs is much lower (0.08 donors per million people) compared to other countries. Various studies among different population groups have shown varied levels of awareness about organ donation. In the present study among school teachers we found actual awareness differed from self perceived level of awareness. Awareness about the existing law (2%), cardiac death vis a vis brain death (10%) was the lowest among the variables considered. Attitude also varied when donation for own children and spouse was compared with that toward relatives and friends. Family was found to be an important factor to make an opinion to donate organs.