Living on in others through the gift of organ donation
The Hindustan Times Trailblazer Awards 2021, presented by Ambience, are honouring eight individuals who have shown grit and acumen amid the Covid-19 pandemic that shook the world in 2020. Presenting the second set of awardees...
Syed Rafath Parveen was the apple of her dad Syed Ahmad Ali-Shah’s eye. In death, she became a hero. Born in 1978, Parveen was a go-getter. She felt very passionately about being an educator and pursued degrees such as M.Ed and M.Phil. She believed that education is the most powerful weapon to change the world. Her teaching career took her from Delhi Public School, Mathura Road, to Delhi Private School, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.
Maninder Jit Kaur, a friend and colleague, says that Parveen used to stay back in school to teach underprivileged students and dreamt of building an NGO.
For the past one year, she had been working in Dubai, away from her family. The 41-year-old was back in New Delhi for the winter holidays, which she planned to spend with her husband, Shaikh Salim Durrani and her sons, Arsh and Aman. Little did they know that this would be their last moments together. It all began with a headache leading to a brain aneurysm, and the doctors declared her brain dead. But even in her death, she managed to save four lives. Her heart was transplanted in an Assam Rifles havildar from Uttarakhand, her kidney in a patient from Jharkhand, her liver saved a terminally ill patient from Delhi and her second kidney was transported to Artemis Hospital, Gurgaon.
Parveen’s family was motivated by the prospect that something positive could come out of the irreparable loss they had just suffered. The fact that someone else would have a better life, made her father and husband give their consent to the organ donation. Her father says, “We’d call our daughter a hero because she’s a hero to us. Her legacy will live through others who have received the organs. A piece of her lives inside them. We have a sense of peace knowing that she still lives on.”
There is no greater act of compassion and courage on part of this family. And this act has inspired six other organ donations in the same hospital in Delhi. The medical staff has greatly appreciated their gesture of donation.