The Network and Alliance of Transplant Coordinators (NATCO), in association with MOHAN Foundation and the Centre for Management of Health Services (CMHS) - Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad organised the 12th National Annual Transplant Coordinators’ Conference at the IIM Ahmedabad campus on 30th November and 1st December 2019. The theme of this year’s conference was “Let’s Collaborate,” with a focus on exploring public-private partnership options for organ donation in India. Experts from government, industry, transplant professionals, and public health specialists were invited to be part of this focus discussion. The conference had close to 150 Transplant Coordinators, working in public and private hospitals, participating from across the country.

The inaugural saw Dr. Errol D’Souza – Director, IIM-A, Prof. Rajesh Chandwani – Chairperson, CMHS, Mr. PWC Davidar, IAS – Former Principal Secretary, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Dr. Sunil Shroff – Managing Trustee, MOHAN Foundation, Dr. Vishavdeep Goyal – Chief Operating Officer, Apollo Hospitals, Ahmedabad, and Mr. Ajith S Babu – Milaap lighting the ceremonial lamp. Dr. Shroff, Mrs. Lalitha Raghuram – President, NATCO, Dr. D’Souza and Mr. Davidar addressed the gathering. Dr. Hemal Kanvinde – Secretary, NATCO delivered the NATCO report.

With a focus on policy perspectives, this year’s conference featured many eminent speakers including Dr. Jayanti Ravi, IAS – Principal Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, Gujarat and Dr. Rakesh Gupta, IAS – Project Director, CM’s Good Governance Associates Program, Haryana; Nodal Officer – Beti Bachao Beti Padhao CM Office, Haryana.

The Swamy Narayan Memorial Oration was delivered by Dr. Sonal Asthana, Clinical Lead HPB Surgery and Multi-organ Transplant, Aster CMI Hospital, Bengaluru. His lecture highlighted the need to make the transplant programme inclusive, affordable and accessible.

Ms. Rajinder Kaur, Transplant Coordinator - PGIMER, Chandigarh bagged the Swamy Narayan Best Transplant Coordinator Award for the year 2019. Ms. Priti Jain - Alexis Hospital, Nagpur and Ms. G Lakshmi – CARE Hospital, Telangana also won awards for best transplant coordinators, sponsored by Abhayam Kidney Care Trust. For the first time, a new award was instituted – the Milaap-MOHAN-NATCO Best Transplant Coordinators’ Award, which recognises efforts towards fundraising for economically backward patients. Five transplant coordinators from different parts of the country were the recipients of the award.

Ms. Pallavi Kumar, Executive Director (Delhi-NCR), MOHAN Foundation was felicitated at the event for her extraordinary achievements that included scaling the Everest Base Camp and Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2018 and 2019 respectively as a tribute to organ donors and commitment to the cause.

Dr. Geetika Vashisth’s paper titled ‘In-depth analysis of the socio-demographic profile of people from across India who pledged to be organ donors, and the medium of information that they interacted with leading to them pledging’ bagged the Dr. J. Amalorpavanathan Best Scientific Paper award. A poster on ‘Knowledge and attitude on organ donation among auto- rickshaw drivers in Chennai’ submitted by MOHAN Foundation won the award in the poster category.