Organ donation activist Nayan Dhamdhere : a tribute

Special Correspondent

Chennai, April 6 : In both sickness and health Nayan Dhamdhere promoted organ donation in India with her full zeal. This dedicated social worker who died on March 31 campaigned tirelessly for this mission from her hometown Pune and in the work she was helped by her husband Mr.Rajan and her father-in-law.

She constantly organised campaigns on organ donation, distributed posters in English and Marathi, organized road shows and addressed meetings. She was often called to counsel families for organs in the event of brain death taking place at a local hospital in Pune.

She opposed the Maharastra organ sharing network (ZTCC) policy that organs that originated in Maharastra would stay in that state; even if they were wasted and there were no takers of the organ there. She threatened to go on indefinite hunger fast on the issue in front of the state Assembly, till she received a high level assurance that the matter would be looked into. Forming the first ever “Liver Patient Support Group’ in India she appeared in front of the Human Rights Commission to project her views on organ donation. She constantly worked for the cause even when she was low on her health. On many occasions she answered over 100 phone calls a day on the subject.

Nayan was close to many in the medical faternity. Some admired her and some were even scared her of her guts and her free spirit. She always had the support of MOHAN Foundation as she was a true member and volunteer of the Foundation which works to promote organ donation. Looking at her zeal she was appointed the Co-ordinator to lead the organ donation movement in Maharastra.

Nayan was true crusader. She was suffering from Budd Chiari Syndrome. This causes portal hypertension and liver failure due to blockage of vein between the liver and the body. This blockage results in congestion of liver resulting in its fibrosis. For this she had undergone a TIPS shunt in London about three years ago. After the shunt procedure she had a few ups and down in her health. She was also on waiting list for a cadaver liver transplant.

Miraculously she improved and was taken off the waiting list about a year ago. About 6 months ago due to the anti-coagulants she was taking, she suffered brain haemorrhage and was in a deep state of coma and was on the verge of being declared brain dead.

At that stage Rajan – her husband told the doctors that if she was declared brain dead, he wanted to donate all her organs that could be used. She however again made a remarkable recovery from this state of deep coma. After this setback she never regained her strength. She had become very frail and lost some of her eye movements and strength. But she never stopped her work. Even a day before she passed away she attended a meeting on organ donation.

"If India had a few crusaders like her for organ donation we would never have shortage of organs and the cadaver organ donation programme would just take off," a spokesman for MOHAN Foundation said. Condolences could be mailed to info@mohanfoundation.org.

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