Organ Donation is a person pledges during his lifetime that after death, organs from his/her body can be used for transplantation to help terminally ill patients and giving them a new lease of life.

The major donor organs and tissues are heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, eyes, heart valves, skin, bones, bone marrow, connective tissues, middle ear, and blood vessels. Therefore one donor can possibly give gift of life to many terminally ill patients who would not survive otherwise.

It is the irreversible and permanent cessation of all brain functions. Brain can no longer send messages to the body to perform vital functions like breathing, sensation, obeying commands etc. Such persons are kept on artificial support (ventilation) to maintain oxygenation of organs so that the organs are in healthy condition until they are removed. Most cases of brain death are the result of head injuries, brain tumours patients from Intensive care units. Organs of such patients can be transplanted in organ failure patients to provide them a new lease of life.

Organ donation takes healthy organs and tissues from one person for transplantation into another. Experts say that the organs from one donor can save or help as many as 50 people. The organs that can be donated include:

Human-to-human transplantation of organs has been accepted by doctors worldwide as the best line of treatment and often the only one for a wide range of fatal diseases such as End Stage Renal Disease (kidney failure). Organ transplantation has been one of the greatest advances of modern science that has resulted in many patients getting a renewed lease of life. A living person can donate organs, after natural death or after 'brain death'. After natural death only a few tissues can be donated (like cornea, bone, skin and blood vessels) whereas after brain death almost 37 different organs and tissues can be donated including critical organs such as kidneys, heart, liver and lungs.

Human organ donation is fast developing into a major treatment protocol. However it is yet to make any significant dent in India. A country with a population of over 1 billion people, India lags behind in the implementation of a cadaveric donation programme. Annually, while over 100,000 Indians suffer from End Stage Renal Disease, only a mere 3,000 are recipients of a donor kidney, of which only a small percentage are cadaver organs. In fact, the total number of patients who have received cadaver kidneys in India from 1995 to 2003 is only 524, an abysmally small figure. The major problem now facing transplant surgery is a critical shortage of available organs.