Just one decision of a 56-year-old woman in 2018 to donate organs in case she died an unnatural death, gave a new lease of life to five patients.
Sheela Desai, a Non Resident Indian based in South Carolina state of the US has given her assent to donate her organs by mentioning in her driving licence in May 2018. She had flown down to Gujarat on November 21 as she had a wedding to attend in Valsad district. However, as she was out for shopping with her sister, she fainted and fell off the two-wheeler which was in movement and experienced severe head injuries and was eventually declared brain dead.
However, as her US driving licence showed that, she had marked ‘yes’ for being an organ donor. When contacted by hospital authorities, the head of donate life, Nilesh Mandlewala and newly-appointed member to the state advisory committee on organ donation, spoke to the family and asked them to check for her consent as an organ donor. Receiving positive response from her family and her own consent in the driving licence, her kidneys, liver, eyes were donated to the patients who were in need for organs.
Such system for asking consent to be an organ donor during the driving licence itself exists even in India but however, the stakeholders said that, they have not received any cases where the brain dead patients had consented to donate their organs by themselves as only new licence applicants got that option.
