Dr. Sunil Shroff, Managing Trustee, MOHAN Foundation, attended the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Congress 2016 in Warwick, UK. The theme of this year’s congress was “Challenging Paradigms: to match world class performance”. The conference was organised on 20th & 21st September 2016 in the Ramphal Building on the Conference Park at the University of Warwick. The conference included a mixture of plenary sessions and workshops, the David Price Memorial session, posters and free papers. Other members from India were Dr. Sridhar Nagaiyan, Senior ICU consultant, Intensive Care Unit, Kauvery Hospital, Chennai (he was formerly NHS Blood and Transplant Regional Director for Organ Donation, Midlands, UK), Dr. Sheetal Dhadphale-Mahajani, Medical Gastroenterologist, Ruby Hall Clinic, Pune and Mrs. Arati Gokhale, Central Coordinator, ZTCC Pune.

This conference celebrated the success of 10 years of the NHS Blood and Transplant Taskforce’s recommendations to increase the organ donation rate in the UK. The recommendations recognised the importance of Clinical Lead in Organ Donation (CLOD) and Specialist Nurse in Organ Donation (SNOD) who worked in the ICU. And after the recommendations, the posts of CLODs and SNODs were created in the UK. This conference saw the participation of over 400 CLODs & SNODs. The conference was unique as these were the clinicians and nurses that helped increase the organ donation rate from 12.9 per million population (pmp) in 2006 to 21 pmp in 2015/16 (www. odt.nhs.uk/pdf/activity-report/activity_report_2015_16.pdf). This period also saw the growth in the number of Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) donors in the UK and for the first time in many decades the numbers on the waiting list have started coming down. The positive impact of the task force’s success was well felt throughout the two days in the beautiful Warwick University campus where this conference is held every year. It is a conference and a group that needs to be duplicated in many countries that are struggling with the deceased donation programme.