HEALTH

‘Educate people on organ donation’
By Poonam Batth
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Feb 21 — The ability to give somebody a life is the greatest gift that anyone can give. Thanks to the advancements in medical science, organ donors can help save some lives even after death and live in somebody else’s body. This was stated by Prof Del Kahn, Chief of Transplant Surgery in Groteescheuur Hospital, South Africa, while talking to Chandigarh Tribune today.

Dr Kahn, who had come to participate in the 12th annual conference of the Indian Society of Organ Transplantation, is now visiting the Department of Hepatology, PGI.

With a view to encouraging cadaver donations, Prof Kahn emphasised on the need to educate public on brain stem death and organ donation. He pointed out that in most of the developing countries like India the concept of brain death was not clear and the people were are also not willing to accept the idea of organ donation.

According to Dr Kahn, brain stem death was now routinely accepted as death. He said that while tissues such as cornea, bone and cartilage could be removed within hours of a cardiac arrest and still be suitable for transplantation, most other organs required persistent blood circulation to be viable so as to be of any use to the recipient after transplant. Brain stem death was the death before the heart stopped beating. He explained that if a patient who was on life support system was brain dead, he could never recover.

He further said that if organs could be removed from these individuals with brain stem death and a beating heart, they could be transplanted into the recipients suffering from various organ failures. He also talked about the clinical diagnosis required to certify brain stem death.

In order to facilitate organ and tissue donation to meet the shortage of organs, Prof Kahn stressed on the need to encourage people to talk of brain stem death under normal circumstances so that no time was lost before the organs were removed. For, when a calamity occurred the attendants were not in a position to think in terms of organ donation. He also highlighted the role media, including television, could play in motivating people to become cadaver donors. Public figures like cricketers and film stars could promote the cause of organ donation. He said that even repeated telecast of successful kidney transplants would bring forward more organ donors in the times to come.

Dr Kahn pointed out that long-term success of living related donors and cadaver donors was better than non-heart beating donors. While the success rate was almost 70-80 per cent in case of former, it was 55 per cent in case of the latter.

Highlighting the need for liver transplant, Dr Kahn revealed that statistics showed that nearly 2.5 lakh of patients died of chronic liver diseases all over the country, of which only 5 to 10 per cent received any kind of treatment. He said that since hepatitis B was the most common medical problem affecting countries like India and South Africa, there was enormous need for liver transplants. He said that in countries like Japan which did not have brain death laws, live transplants were done by taking half of the segment of a live related donor to save a patient.

Prof Y.K Chawla, Head of the Hepatology Department, PGI said that the PGI was yet to start liver transplants, even though the technique and expertise were available. This, he said, was due to lack of cadaver donors and constraint of funds. He lamented that even though Hepatitis B had emerged as a deadly disease in the recent past, the government was still busy spending its meagre resources on the prevention and treatment of communicable diseases.

Dr Kahn is presently working to reduce the cost following the transplant. He suggested that this could be done by prescribing the expensive drug for one year after transplant and then switching over to the less expensive drugs for the remaining period.

SPORT

School honours sportspersons
By Our Sports Reporter

CHANDIGARH, Feb 21 — In order to encourage and boost sport and co-curricular activities in the school, the Parent Teacher Association of IS Dev Samaj Girls Senior Secondary School, Sector 21, honoured the students who had won fame for the school, at a function held today on the school premises.

These students, more than 50 in number, were provided with sport kits in the form of track suits and T-shirts. Ms Sumati Kanwar, Principal of the school and herself a former basketball player, congratulated these players who had won various national and state-level meets.

Dr P.C. Kashyap, Regional Director in Charge of the SAI Northern Centre in Sector 42; Mr J.P.S. Sidhu, Joint Director Sports of the UT; and Mr R.C. Gujral were among those who awarded these students.

Girls who were awarded for doing well at various national-level meets are as follows: Basketball — Kavita, Navneet, Harpreet, Deepika, Paramjit, Manpreet, Neha, Shveta, Vandana, Amanpreet.

Hockey — Prakash, Sunila, Sadhna Singh, Savita, Eram, Prem Lata, Poonam, Mandeep, Rajneesh, Suman, Asha, Pooja and Anu; ball badminton — Shveta, Meenakshi, Poonam and Rimple Rana; volleyball — Geeta, Sushma and Rubina; judo — Poonam, Sapna and Sarita.

Kho-kho — Nandini, Manju, Jaswinder, Rupali and Alka; shooting — Vandana; athletics — Pawandeep, Mukesh and Ramanjeet; cricket — Paramjot, Parul, Nitasha, Anuradha, Monika, Anupama and Sunita.

The girls who were honoured for doing well at various state-level meets are as follows: Basketball — Sangeeta, Mandeep, Jasmine, Dolly, Nirmal, Poonam and Abha; shooting — Rachna; judo — Rekha, Ravneet and Vishoda; kho-kho — Sonia Sharma, Mamta, Neha, Kiran, Sunita and Priya; cricket: Amit, Vicky, Madhu, Sheetal, Monica, Ranjeet, Deepa and Suruchi; ball badminton — Mamta, Deepika, Poonam and Rajni.

Body building: Ranjit won the Junior 'Mr Chandigarh' title while Mintoo won the sub-junior title at the Sixth Sub-junior and Ninth Junior Mr Chandigarh Body Building Championship organised by the Chandigarh Amateur Body Building Association which concluded here past evening at the Sector 10 DAV College. Mr Vijay Vardhan, IAS and Managing Director of the Haryana Seeds Development Corporation gave away the prizes. In all, 72 body builders of various institutions and health clubs took part in the meet.

Results: Sub-junior (below 55 kg) — Amit 1, Vijay 2, Pardeep Kumar 3; below 60 kg — Parveen 1, Vickey 2, Baljeet Kumar 3; above 60 kg — Mintoo 1, Suraj 2, Amrinder Singh 3; junior (below 55 kg) — Gopal Baru 1, Amit 2, Vijay 3; below 60 kg — Kulwinder Singh 1, Munish Kumar 2, Baljit Kumar 3; below 65 kg — Mintoo 1, Bhupinder Singh 2, Mandeep Singh 3; below 70 kg — Ranjit Singh 1, Haramrit 2, Inderpal 3; below 75 kg — Prem Chaudhary 1, Paramvir 2, Sandeep 3; above 75 kg — Hari Narayan 1, Gurkirpal Singh 2, Jaswinder 3.

Videocon XI win: Superb performances by Vineet Khosla who scored 51 runs off 31 deliveries and Arun who made 50 runs, helped Videocon XI beat KL Foundation XI by 91 runs in the MM Lal Jain Memorial Cricket Tournament organised by the Chandigarh Cricket Association here today.

In another match, Excel XI beat Youth Club on the basis of loss of fewer wickets as the scores were equal.

Brief scores: Videocon XI — 196 runs for four wickets (Vineet Khosla 51, Arun 50, Suman Gambheer 39, Munish 28 n.o., Rajinder 2 for 26); KL Foundation XI — 105 runs all out in 22 overs (Madan Pawar 59, Surinder 4 for 12, Harminder 2 for 10, Ravinder 2 for 18).

Youth Club — 144 runs for nine wickets in 25 overs (Inderjeet 28, Vijay Rattan 50, Vinod 2 for 18, S. Singh 2 for 13); Excel XI — 144 runs for eight wickets in 25 overs (Vikram Verma 54, Chandan 30 n.o., Ajay Bakshi 16, Girish Bhanot 3 for 23).