CURRENT AFFAIRS: IMPORTANT DAYS
World Organ Donation Day – Observed on Aug 13
- August 13 of every year is observed as World Organ Donation Day aimed at raising awareness about the importance of organ donation and encourages people to take a pledge for the same.
- One person can save up to eight lives from chronic illness by pledging to donate their heart, kidney, pancreas, lungs, liver, intestines, hands, face, tissues, bone marrow, and stem cells.
- Hence the day strives to help people in realizing that volunteering to donate their organs after death can be life-changing for many.
- The first-ever organ donation was done in 1954 when Ronald Lee Herrick donated a kidney to his identical twin brother.
- Doctor Joseph Murray conducted the procedure for which he has also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for advances in organ transplantation.
