Voluntary body donation in India: perceptions of first year medical students

Abstract

Introduction: Body donation has emerged as the preferred source of human cadavers around the world for anatomical education as medical schools around the world are emphasizing on the ethical acquisition of human cadavers because a neo-model of anatomical education is evolving around the world. In some countries, there is a disinterested gift of a human body, for the benefit of medical education and society. In contrast, there are countries, like India, where cadaver donation programs have a lot of problems and medical schools continue to use unclaimed corpses for anatomical studies, raising ethical concerns.

Objective: The present study was undertaken to unearth the factors prevalent in the Indian society that adversely affects the health of body bequest programs in the country.

Method: A study was conducted based on a questionnaire that included a representative sample of first year medical students. Results: Although it was noted that 74.5% respondents were aware of the shortage of human bodies for teaching anatomy in Indian medical schools and 52% responded in favour of donating their bodies in the future, however, just 6.1% of their relatives had made the same decision.

Conclusions: The analysis of study observations helped to identify specific factors that adversely affect the outcome of organ donation programs in the country and the authors made some recommendations to improve the scenario. The religious perception of this reality, in a medical education scenario, should be considered.