Ride for Life: Amdavadi Biker groups come togither for the cause of Organ Donation

500 biking enthusiasts meet to enlighten Ahmedabad about the necessity and responsibility of organ donation by rallying through the city on their motorcycles. ‘Ride for Life’ commemorates the ‘Donate an Organ’ week.

The Ahmedabad Chapter of Young Indians [YI] organized a bike rally titled ‘Ride for Life’ on Sunday, August 11 to commemorate ‘Donate an Organ’ week.

The rally observed a participation by over 500 biking enthusiasts, ranging from age group of 18-60, from as many as 32 bike riders clubs and groups. Bikers commenced their journey from the CIMS [Care Institute of Medical Sciences] Hospital at Science City crossroad and travelled through Iscon crossroad and Shivranjini crossroad to reach till Nehrunagar and returned from the same route to rendezvous again at CIMS Hospital. The participants sailed through their expedition whilst carrying placards and posters that explained the importance of organ donation and appealed the citizens of Ahmedabad to become organ donors.

The event was graced by various dignitaries of the city, namely the CII Gujarat ChairmanMr. Raju Shah, Young Indians-Ahmedabad Chapter Chair Mr. Monil Parikh, Traffic Police ACP Akash Patel, Adani Enterprise Director Mr. Pranav Adani and Managing Director and Senior Interventional Cardiologist at CIMS Hospital Dr. Milan Chag for its inauguration. Amongst them were also a few eminent celebrities like Gujarati actors Mr. Pratik Gandhi, Ms. Deeksha Joshi, Ms. Kinjal Rajpriya, and singer Mr.Arvind Vegda.

Speaking about the rally, Mr. Monil Parikh said, “It was exciting and gratifying to see more than 500 people from different walks of life coming together to contribute towards the cause of organ donation. We are thankful to the participants for their support to this significant cause, and look forward to more such initiatives in the future”.

The event concluded with an interactive session from an Organ donor family and few doctors and experts from CIMS Hospital educated the participants about various misconceptions of organ donations and the huge gap between the required number and actually collection of it.

The YI-Ahmedabad group also organised an open session for discussion on the topic of organ donation at CIMS Hospital Auditorium on Tuesday 13^th August. The panel of this discussion included DCP of Ahmedabad Traffic Police Mr. Tejas Patel, SOTTO Convener of Gujarat Dr. Himanshu Patel, Cardiac Surgeon Dr. Dhiren Shah, GIF an organ-YI Ahmedabad Chair Mr. Niraj Kalawatia, from Radio City 91.1 FM RJ Saurabh, Neurophysician Dr. Pranav Hoshi, Transplant Anesthetist Dr. Chintan Seth and Social Worker Mr. Kamleshbhai Shah.

The purpose of this activities is to sensitise people about the need for organ donation. A lot of brain-deaths that occur in India annually,  can be prevented if the deceased has access to healthy organs from willing donors. In his address, Dr Dhiren Shah, Cardiac Surgeon at CIMS, said,
“Awareness regarding organ donation has improved in the last few
years, but we need to do much more. There is a huge disparity between
the number of organ required, and the organs donated. The result is
that lakhs of patients pass away each year while waiting for an organ
donor. We need to step up for the cause of organ donation.” In comparison with other developing nations the organ donor population is too small in India, largely due to misconceptions and mis-information. Such events further the cause and gives society insights on critical social subjects.

Image Source: Organizers