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The Donate Life Campaign: a multi-disciplinary awareness campaign on organ donation Skander Essafi
Skander is a third-year medical student and the Local Public Health Officer for his local committee in Sousse, Tunisia. He may be contacted at: skander.es@gmail.com
“Because we are aware of the real situation of organ donation in Tunisia, and because we aim to be responsible and useful to our country, we, the medical students of Tunisia, would like to suggest that a social advocacy campaign is carried out in order to promote organ donation. We will try our best to discover new approaches to raising awareness about organ donation.” This is how Tunisian medical students initiated their project, the “Donate Life Campaign” in November 2012. The campaign has come a long way since then, with many achievements and some great ideas for the future. Let’s learn about organ donation! Our project started with a four-day training workshop for 40 SCOPHians from around Tunisia who were all keen to volunteer. The aim was to have a dedicated group of peer-educators to promote the concept of organ donation to members of the public, especially to university students aged between 18 and 30. In order to help achieve this we had lectures clarifying the main aspects of organ donation in Tunisia, specifically from scientific, legal and ethical points of view; and highlighting the progress that has been made recently. Peer trainings were also conducted on communication skills and advocacy for organ donation. Our campaign is currently receiving a lot of support from the National Center for Organ Transplantation, NGOs, medical faculties and professors. Let’s talk about organ donation! Since starting, we have reached approximately 150 students at six non-medical universities through
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both surveys and workshops. During the initial stages, people were undecided, but after filling in the survey and attending the workshop they learnt more about organ donation and most came to view it as a noble action to take. In the course of events many questions were raised about religious and ethical issues surrounding organ donation. In particular, people wanted to know what the passages of the Quran had to say about the topic; and what the status of organ trafficking was in Tunisia. We didn’t always have the answers to some of these questions so we plan to develop more comprehensive trainings in order to prepare our peer-educators as best as possible. At the end of February we had the opportunity to carry out a road show that visited all of the medical faculties in Tunisia. We talked about the promotion of organ donation and transplantation around the world, and had a lively discussion assessing the current situation in Tunisia. We were lucky to have support from a number of transplant surgeons as well as Mr André Le Tutour, the president of “TRANSHEPAT” (an association based in France which specializes in liver donations), who gave of their time to talk to the students. All in all more than 200 medical students attended the road show! What’s next? We are planning to have more local workshops soon. We are also trying to improve our peereducators’ skills in order to spread awareness and make our work more relevant. We have exciting things planned, so watch this space for more updates!
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