Practice and Barriers towards Organ Donation among Young Malaysians

The objective of this study was to determine students’ practice and barriers towards organ donation.

A total of 181 university students were enrolled in a cross-sectional study conducted among the Management and Science University students, Malaysia. Simple random sampling was used in this study to select the study participants. Questionnaires were distributed at the following places in the university: university plaza, university square, university café and to students in the classroom. The questionnaire consisted of 16 items: seven items for assessing sociodemographic characteristics among the study participants, such as course, age, gender, race, marital status and family income; four items for measuring knowledge of the students towards organ donation; and five items for measuring attitude towards organ donation. Consent forms were obtained and the objectives of the survey were explained. Data were analysed using SPSS version 13 and t-tests.

A total of 181 university students participated in this study. The majority of them were males (74%), younger than 22 years of age, single (94.5%), Malays (74.6%) and with income equal or less than 3000 Ringgit Malaysia. The barriers towards organ donation were lack of knowledge (76.8%), followed by ‘do not know who will get the organ’ (14.4%) and the religious beliefs (8.8%). Regarding the practice, only 6.6% were registered as organ donors. With respect to the attitude, about 50.3% of participants were interested to get registered as donors in the future. Age and race were significant factors influencing the practice of university students towards organ donation.

The barriers of participants showed lack of knowledge of organ donation.