Doctors call for raising awareness to encourage voluntary body donation

New Delhi: With medical colleges in Delhi finding it hard to arrange for dead bodies for medical students to perform dissection, doctors in the city have said that awareness must be raised among people to encourage voluntary cadaver donations for medical research.

"With body donation not being that popular, there is always a shortage of cadavers. Students of both undergraduate and post-graduate courses need bodies for anatomy classes.

"But increasing voluntary cadaver donation requires a great deal of awareness among people. There are some government and homeopathy medical colleges which face a harrowing time finding dead bodies," said Alok Kumar of Dadhichi Deh Dan Samiti, an NGO working for body donation which donated its 100th body to AIIMS.

According to AIIMS Director MC Mishra, the issue needs to be taken up on "mission mode".

"There is a need to launch numerous campaigns and make people pledge their bodies for medical research," said Mishra, adding that AIIMS is soon planning to start laparoscopic skill training on dead bodies.

"Trials on live subjects are risky and doing them on models don't really serve any purpose. So, we are planning to start laparoscopic skill training on dead bodies," said Mishra.