JEDDAH: A campaign to promote awareness about organ donation will be launched across the Kingdom early next year. The campaign, in association with Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT), will run in all Saudi schools, universities, companies, malls, public places and media outlets.
According to reports compiled by SCOT, there is a huge backlog of patients on the waiting list for organ transplants; the majority of them are in the 30-40 year age group.
The waiting list is growing day by day and at the same time there is a dearth of donors.
Raising national awareness about brain death and the importance of organ donation will involve celebrities and the mass media. It could be the first step in solving the problem, organizers of the campaign say.
SCOT will provide necessary medical support to the campaign. “The Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation will provide us with doctors for the campaign,” said Hajar Al-Atawi, a 20-year-old medical student at Ibn Sina National College for Medical Studies in Jeddah and the coordinator for Ibn Sina campaign group.
“In the meantime, we are also trying to get financial support from sponsors to meet the campaign expenses,” she said. “We have been planning for the campaign for more than six months now,” she added.
Four medical universities are coordinating to launch this campaign simultaneously in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam.
“We have King Abdulaziz University and Ibn Sina National College in Jeddah, King Saud University in Riyadh and King Faisal University in Dammam working together on the project,” Al-Atawi told Arab News.
“The campaign aims to increase people’s understanding of brain death and how they can help through donating their organs to patients who still have a chance to survive,” she added.
“There are a lot of people who are in dire need of organ transplantation,” Al-Atawi said.
This is the first time such a large-scale campaign will be launched in the Kingdom, according to Al-Atawi. “We will launch it in the major cities in the first year and hopefully all over the Kingdom in the second year,” she said.
However, the campaign is still in the planning stage. Coordinators from the four universities are brainstorming a work plan and are gathering needed information, and contacting sponsors and volunteers.
“Up to now, we have managed to set up several groups with each group having eight teams,” Al-Atawi said.
Each team is entrusted with a specific task. For example, the public places committee is responsible for going to places such as malls. The other teams include the communication committee, scientific committee, training committee, exhibitions committee, website committee, schools and universities committee and research committee.
This campaign is part of activities envisioned by the Standing Committee on Human Rights and Peace in Saudi Arabia (SCORP-SA), one of four standing committees of the International Federation of Medical Students Association-Saudi Arabia (IFMSA-SA) founded in 2007.
SCORP deals with the problems of special-needs people, such as orphans, the elderly, cancer and chronic disease patients, the poor and abused children. The IFMSA is an independent, nongovernmental and nonpartisan federation of medical students’ associations around the world.
