The Hindu Council UK joined other leading Faith Organisations and BAME Groups and took part in a Twitter campaign on Thursday 22nd February 2018, (between 7:00am and 9:00pm) – with a day of tweets to get faith and ethnic communities talking about organ donation and to take part in the Department of Health’s consultation on moving to an ‘Opt Out’ Organ Donation system (and encouraging people to sign the organ register in the meantime, too (if they wished).
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The Hindu Council UK’s participation in the campaign included reasons why it’s important for Hindus to consider donating organs and also quotes by Leading Hindu Spiritual Leaders – Pujya Rameshbhai Oza (Bhaishree) and Shree Dwarkeshlalji Maharajshree who have backed organ donation.
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You can see the tweets that the Hindu Council UK tweeted by visiting: @hinducounciluk
The hashtag used for the tweet storm was: #talkorgandonation
This campaign was NOT about telling people to be organ donors – people have the right to make what ever choice they want to make – but it was about trying to rectify the fact that Family refusal rates among non white families in the UK are approx 70% compared to approx 35% among white families. The main reasons for this was a lack of CONVERSATION about organ donation in families and not knowing what their FAITH said about the issue. Regardless of an Opt IN or and Opt OUT system, families will still have the last word on approving a donation.
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ETHNICITY MATTERS in organ donation because BAME people on organ donation waiting lists wait (quite a bit) longer for a suitable matching ethnic organ, due to a lack of donors. So this really is a case of communities looking out for one another.
The Faith/BAME community’s #talkorgandonation twitter campaign was an enormous success. It was a great day and really impressive to see the tweets that were generated as well as the reach. People are still posting and retweeting posts so the discussion continues……
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As a snapshot of the reach and success of the Twitter campaign:
* Between the hours of 5-7pm, 100 of the Faith/BAME #talkorgandonation tweets reached almost 1.4m twitter users and generated 1.6m interactions (retweets/replies, etc).
This Twitter campaign was really an excellent example of the power of faith and ethnic community organisation to come together and generate change.
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The Department of Health and Social care have launched the ‘Organ donation consultation’. The Government plans to change the organ donation system to an ‘opt-out’ system. They want to find out what people think of how the changes should be made. The consultation closes at 11.59pm on 6th March 2018:
THE HINDU COUNCIL UK ENCOURAGES THE HINDU COMMUNITY TO TAKE PART IN THE CONSULTATION AND HAVE YOUR SAY:
https://engage.dh.gov.uk/organdonation/custom_layout/amended-box/
Further information about Hinduism and Organ Donation:
https://nhsbtdbe.blob.core.windows.net/umbraco-assets/1288/hindu_dharma_and_organ_donation.pdf
Sanjay Jagatia
Director Secretary General
Hindu Council UK