The very thought of medical students cutting off various parts of the body in order to study freaked me out. It felt like a nightmare. I once requested her to allow me to carry out a normal funeral instead of donating the body if at all something like that happens and she is no more. After a lot of persuasions, she agreed. Around 6 weeks later she passed away due to a massive heart attack. I as the son ignored the donation papers and carried out a normal funeral.
The very thing to actually prove here is that it is very easy to say that our body should be donated after our death but it needs a lot of courage for the children to actually accept it and carry out the last wishes which I did not have.
Recently one such incident came across when Vishwadeep Verma who resides at Good Shepherd Colony, Kolar Road, Bhopal lost his mother Late. Sarla Verma, she was 75, she was suffering from severe osteoporosis along with orthopedic problems. She always wanted to donate her body for medical research so that Doctors/Medical Student's could figure out the cure and other patients could benefit. In fact, in 1986, she motivated the entire family to fill out eye donation forms. At that time itself, she had expressed the desire to donate her cadaver for medical research. She passed away on April 16, 2017, after a prolonged illness. As per her wishes and the wishes of the family, her eyes were donated to Hamidia Hospital, and body to AIIMS. She had lost her husband in 2009. Vishwadeep was not keen on reporting this issue with any sort of media or newspapers as he did not want it to be advertised hence he hasn’t even provided his personal photographs. We at WTN convinced him to let us write about this issue as it would inspire more and more people to donate their organs after their death for the wellbeing of mankind.
We salute the noble decision made by Late Sarla Verma and also appreciated the courage Vishwadeep has shown towards fulfilling his mother’s last wishes.
Sameer Moolgaokar for WTN
