The Times of India (TOI) ran its campaign on Organ donation for the second consecutive year from August 6 – 13, 2014, leading up to an Organ Donor Day on August 13, 2014. The main aim behind the campaign was to spread awareness about organ donation, increase the number of donor registrations and create pressure on the government to create a national donor registry.

MOHAN Foundation was one of the partners for the same, helping provide content,donor/recipient stories, organ donation data and other relevant information needed to make this a success. The other NGOs involved were Shatayu, Gift Your Organ and Gift a Life.

During the one week campaign there were articles pertaining to organ retrievals in some of the previous years and the successful run of Tamil Nadu as a state with the highest donor rate. Some donor stories of the retrievals coordinated by MOHAN Foundation transplant coordinators such as that of Master Sushant Kaushal in Delhi were also published. Consecutively, some awareness sessions conducted by MOHAN Foundation were also covered by TOI in K R Mangalam School, Gurgaon and Shri Natesan Vidyasala Mudichur, TN to name a few.

Other activities conducted by TOI during this campaign included a live coverage of the trial run of transporting an airlifted heart from New Delhi IGI airport T3 to Fortis Medical Research Institute, Gurgaon and an interview with Facebook’s Ankhi Das (Director of public policy, India and South-Asia) about the role social media plays in connecting a donor to the needy. Also editorials by prominent doctors such as Dr Samiran Nundy, (HOD, Dept of Organ transplantation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi) were featured.

With respect to donor enrolments, TOI came up with the domain www.organdonationday. in which close to 2500 people registered this year, taking the total number from last year to 83882. The campaign was a successful one due to its high emphasis on creating awareness and the need for a national donor registry. The outcomes will hopefully be actively augmented and recorded in the duration preceding the campaign for the forthcoming year.