Laura Bashraheel Saudi Gazette Since Saudi society is still new to the concept of organ donation, the demand for organs drastically outstrips the number of organ donors in the Kingdom. With the help of social media, a new awareness campaign is launched under the name “Be a donor, save a life” in an attempt to educate people on the issue of organ donation. King Abdulaziz University (KAAU) in collaboration with the Saudi Center for Organ Transplants (SCOT), is launching a three-day awareness campaign on the 21st of November on organ transplantation and donation. According to KAAU, more than 90 students, both male and female, from the medical stream at the university have come forward voluntarily to support the campaign and ensure its continuity. The campaign initially started on social media sites such as Twitter. A hashtag called (A life from my organs) was created to reach more people and promote the campaign's main event at Red Sea Mall. “The main goal of this campaign is to spread awareness and educate the public about the importance of organ donation and how it will help patients,” said Hifa Misfar Al-Qathmai, assistant professor and consultant in anesthesia and intensive care at the university and head of the organizing committee of the campaign. It is also aimed to alleviate the suffering of large number of people suffering from organ failure and help them by opening the doors for donors and volunteers. In the campaign's statement, she said the campaign was launched keeping in mind the guidelines covering religious, social, health and economic aspects and issues related to organ donation and to challenge commonplace perceptions. The campaign will be held twice a year to create an understanding and facilitate communication between community members, patients, their families and medical staff. In an attempt to attract more people, the campaign released a number of photos of people posing with the logo on Twitter. Mashail Sabir, media coordinator and project manager for the campaign's visual content, said that the photos were taken to draw attention and attract Twitter's community. “Thankfully the idea succeeded. We managed to get more 500 followers since we released the photos and video on Twitter,” she said. They also released a video, which introduced a number of public figures including a football player, doctors, radio hosts and others. “We tried to be as diverse as possible in the video we released by bringing media figures, doctors, businessmen and football players who talked for few seconds on organ donation and announced the campaign's launch date,” Sabir added. The campaign, which launched yesterday at Jeddah Corniche, will continue until tomorrow (Sunday) at the Red Sea Mall giving people the opportunity to sign the organ donation card, which could be issued in a minute according to Sabir. In addition, it will provide awareness in the medical, social and religious aspects and will answer any question regarding organ donation. When it comes to the religious aspect, the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars issued a fatwa in 1982 declaring organ donations of living or dead persons permissible. Part of the problem involves a common misconception that brain death is reversible. Unlike a coma, there is virtually universal consensus among the medical community that a human body can be kept alive artificially even when a person is clinically dead. A year ago, Dr. Faisal Abdulraheem Shaheen, Director General of (SCOT) said that the center has provided 9,281 viable organs to end-stage organ failure patients from deceased and living donors. Shaheen also said the total number of kidney transplants since the founding of SCOT in 1993 reached 7,201 including 2,349 transplants for donated kidneys following death, and 4,852 operations for donated kidneys from living persons of which 553 kidneys were transplanted. These figures represent the latest statistics for SCOT up to the end of 2011. Shaheen said the total number of liver transplants reached 1,094 operations. Of these, 621 were operations for livers donated following death and 473 were operations for donated kidneys from living relatives. Aside from these, the center recorded 206 heart transplants, 647 cornea transplants, 19 pancreas transplants, 70 lung transplants and 63 bone marrow transplants. Shaheen said SCOT has increased its efforts to follow up cases where patients are declared brain dead. Patients are declared brain dead after two clinical tests are conducted with a minimum interval of six hours. An electroencephalograph (EEG) is also carried out to ensure that there is no electrical activity in the cerebral cortex for a period of 30 minutes. Doctors can also conduct a further test to ensure that there is no blood flow in the brain's arteries. Once conducted, these clinical procedures are signed by two experienced doctors. Anyone can be an organ donor, all you have to do is get an organ donation card which is proof that someone has agreed to donate his/her organs after death and it can be found online through Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation's (SCOT) website: http://www.scot.org.sa/.
