It refers to Union Tourism Minister KJ Alphons on October 10, 2017 in New Delhi on side-lines of an event to announce Blind-walk 2017 proposing Union government to make eye-donation compulsory, with presently just 45000 making eye-donations annually in a country of 130 crores. Idea though good in intention, but is not practical. Best remedy can be eye-donation being made compulsory in all deaths being in recognised hospitals (private and government).
Rather another noble concept of body-donation much-needed for medical-research and in some cases for transplantation of body-parts may be made compulsory to start with in deaths occurring government-hospitals. Many eminent personalities like Captain Laxmi Sahgal, Anil Biswas, Vishnu Prabhakar and Jyoti Basu opted their dead bodies to be given to medical colleges. Such ideal of body-donation after death can and should be popularised and adopted in practice by giving state-honours only to those departed leaders who may have donated their dead bodies for medical education. Commoners usually follow the trend set by political leaders. Once the phenomenon is made compulsory for leaders, people will follow thus making human-bodies available in plenty for medical research and education.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
