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INDIA - Jesuit pushes for more organ donations

Published Date: January 25, 2010

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Father Albert Huart places flower petals in front of a photo of Father Gerard Beckers during a recent memorial service

KOLKATA, India (UCAN) – A Belgian Jesuit missioner is encouraging his confreres and friends in Kolkata to become organ or body donors.

Father Albert Huart, 85, says the inspiration for his campaign came from Father Gerard Beckers, another Belgian Jesuit who died in 2006 at the age of 82.

Father Beckers had campaigned for organ donations and willed his body to a government hospital for medical research, Father Huart told UCA News.

The late Jesuit was especially keen on eye donations that could give sight to the blind.

Father Huart said he was touched by the respect and reverence doctors showed when they removed Father Beckers’ eyes and looked after his body at the hospital, after his death.

Father Huart has also pledged his eyes and body. He says 18 other Calcutta Jesuits have already pledged their eyes, and 15 have agreed to donate their bodies. He is in touch with Ganadarpan, (translated as “mass mirror”) an NGO, which campaigns for body donations.

“There are so many eyes needed but very few are donated; similarly so many bodies are required for tissue culture and medical research, but very few are received,” Father Huart explained.

The Jesuit gives a spiritual motive for his campaign. “After death, the soul is united with God. The body can still be useful for others,” he said.

He recalled the Jesuit provincial of South Asia had appealed for organ donors and cadavers in a 2007 document. It said donating one’s body is a way of “giving something back to society.”

Father Huart says families are generally emotional after the death of a loved one and not predisposed to handing over the body to hospitals. “It is good to respect the sentiments of the families of the deceased persons,” he added.

Jesuit Father Joseph Pymbellikunnel said the late Father Beckers had inspired him to pledge his body. “We are pledged to people till the end. The last thing I can give to people is my body,” said the 48-year-old Indian priest, who manages the Jesuit media center, Chitrabani (translated as “sight-sound”) in Kolkata.

He said he was not worried if his family objected to his wish. “Even when I joined the Jesuits, some objected to it,” he said.

Organ donation rose sharply in West Bengal after its former chief minister, Jyoti Basu, donated his body for medical research.

Local media reported that some 7,000 members of Basu’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) pledged their bodies for medical research after his death on Jan. 17.

Generally, a donor’s eyes are removed within six hours after death, and the body is handed over to hospitals within 12 hours.

IE08616.1586 January 25, 2010 50 EM-lines (438 words)

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