The country’s largest paramilitary force, CRPF, will launch a mega campaign to raise awareness about organ donation amongst its about 3.25 lakh personnel on Friday, officials said.
The voluntary mission will culminate on the national organ donation day on November 27 and has been planned keeping in mind the spirit of “serving the nation even after death.”
CRPF Director General (DG) A P Maheshwari will take the first pledge over a webinar launch event of the campaign on Friday that has been named ‘e-sanjeevani’, a senior officer said.
The event will be attended by All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Director Dr Randeep Guleria and the head of its Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation (ORBO) Dr Aarti Vij, he said.
“This campaign targets the heart of the problem by creating awareness, dispelling fears, and attesting the acceptability of organ donation as a norm,” CRPF spokesperson Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Moses Dhinakaran said.
“This will be an online exercise in which personnel will be able to pledge donation of eyes, skin, lungs, heart, liver, pancreas, kidney, heart valves, intestine and blood vessels,” Dhinakaran added.
The doctors from AIIMS, Dhinakaran said, will work with Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) doctors to organise webinars, seminars, workshops and awareness videos to encourage participation of CRPF personnel for the “noble and humane cause.”
CRPF, the lead internal security force of the country which is in the thick of operations in the Left Wing Extremism affected parts of the country as well as terrorist violence hit areas of the Kashmir valley will also launch a programme for its specially-abled or ‘divyang’ personnel on Friday.
A skill centre will be launched at the CRPF group centre in Hyderabad that “will have a robust architecture to offer psycho-physical and socio-economic support” to those personnel who have been incapacitated in the line of duty, the DIG said.
At least 189 CRPF personnel, have lost their limbs or underwent amputation in the last 10 years while they were in the line of duty or operations.
“The skilling and re-skilling training sessions will include a two months basic computer training so that the physically impaired warriors can work in the cyber systems and other administrative wings of the force,” Dhinakaran said.
The force will bear the “entire cost” of providing prosthetic limbs for the amputees so that their mobility and maneuverability can at least be ensured, if not fully re-compensated, he said.
The force has also entered into an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Aditya Mehta Foundation to train these personnel in para-sports, he said.
The CRPF with its multifarious roles and duties has deployments and bases in virtually every state of the country and it also has some special units like CoBRA for jungle warfare and the Rapid Action Force for anti-riot and crowd control duties.