Father-daughter duo spread organ donation awareness

Father-daughter duo spread organ donation awareness

PUNE: Father-daughter duo Tejpal Singh Batra (50) and Naina Batra (22) from Viman Nagar are relentlessly working for past two-and-half years to create awareness about organ donation. 

They have conducted 140 sessions across 10 cities in India and met almost 40,000 people face-to-face and 1,40,000 people via events. 

Their initiative is to create awareness in society and to sensitise people by changing their mindset regarding organ donation. 

They have been conducting one on one sessions and events as part of their campaign.

Tejpal Singh Batra, who was working in leading multinational companies, started this initiative with his daughter Naina, who he considers as his strength and inspiration for this social initiative. 

He said, “Due to a personal loss in family, we decided why not work for people and make them aware about organ donation so that they will able to save their loved ones and thus ‘I Gift Life’, our NGO came into existence.” 

He added, “It was challenging as organ donation is connected with deaths and no one really wanted to talk about it. So instead of talking about death, we tell them how one can save people, then eventually even if our loved one needed an organ, chances are someone might be there to help save them.”

Talking about his sessions he said, “We do not ask the audience to submit ‘take pledge’ forms but we actually insist the audience to understand it well and discuss it with their families and then decide what they want to do. As donating organs is a family decision, so their consent is extremely important. But we try to create awarness among people so that the right message goes to all and people make sound judgement, which will stand the test of time.”

“We conduct sessions for different audiences and make sure that we make them understand the facts and break their myth in simple layman language,” he added. 

Backed by National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), this duo conducts sessions for corporates, B-schools, societies, families, doctors and medical students. 

Naina Batra, co-founder, I Gift Life, and an MBA student said, “Initially for two years, it was me and my father who were working, but last year we have got a few volunteers working with our initiative.”

She added, “People are not aware that there is a complete process and a legit way to donate organs, thus it becomes very challenging to make them aware about it.” 

Aarti Gokhale, Central Commitee ZTCC, Pune said, “Now a days, people are becoming aware about organ donation thanks to several NGOs working for creating awareness. The awareness regarding donating organs of brain dead patients is increasing. Pune stands first in the entire zone in terms of organ donations.”  

She added, “Tejpal Batra is doing excellent work of creating awareness among people and he is doing it with great dedication. His daughter is also part of this initiative and that helps in sensitising youth and making them aware about organ donation, which is commendable.”

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