Sridhar Karunya, 15

School: Jurong Secondary School

Topic: Are youths apathetic towards organ donation?

Award: Special Mention, Senior Category, 2021

Grotesque, slimy, mucus-covered collections of tissues in your body that helps keep you alive by carrying out specific functions. Whether you like then or not, organs are a part of you and they are vital for you to live. However, some people in the world do not have the luxury of getting all their organs to function normally. They would need to replace their organs. Sadly, compared to previous generations, youths nowadays are unwilling to donate their organs. This problem would definitely cause problems for organ transplants in the future. This causes people, especially those in the health industry, to claim that youths are apathetic towards organ donations.

As a youth myself, I agree with this statement to a certain extent and I would like to solve this problem. While youths are not apathetic towards organ donation as they are willing to help patients in need of organ donations. However, youths could also be apathetic as they are not aware of the struggles faced by organ recipients and they do not have the time to consider being an organ donor. Therefore, in order to solve the lack of concern youths show towards organ donation, I propose that there should be more awareness spread about organ donation and the idea of helping others bringing happiness and much as it gives happiness while helping selves.

Firstly, youths are apathetic towards organ donation as they are not aware of the struggles faced by organ recipients who are unable to find organ donors. Most youths would not have to go through the pain of needing their organs to be replaced as most of them are blessed with working organs. As a youth myself, I used to think of organ donators being unimportant. They just get surgery and they would get better. However, due to the talk about organ donation held at my school due to the Live On festival held this year, I have gained more information about organ donation. As the speakers went on about the horrors of dialysis and artificial organs, I was not only stupefied, I was on the verge of tears. The thought of what these patients have to go through in order to get what I have been taking for granted all this time. The speech has made not only me but my classmates more conscious about how essential organ donation is to these patients. If this one speech could change the mind-set of a few apathetic teens, imagine the wonders it could do if this awareness was spread to all of the youths in the world. That would definitely result in youths losing apathy towards organ donation. Therefore, one reason youths are apathetic towards organ donation is their lack of awareness about organ donation. A possible way to solve this is by spreading awareness with speeches about organ patients.

Second of all, I believe that youths are apathetic towards organ donation as they do not have the time to consider being an organ donor. In the United Kingdom 90% of their population are in favour of organ donation, however only 25% are registered organ donations. One reason for this is that they lack the time and energy to consider organ donation in the future. To test this theory out, I made an online survey and posted it on my social media, which mainly consists of youths. When asked the question if they supported organ donation, over 98% of the surveyors said they did. However, only 23% of the surveyors actually consider donating their organs in the future. When asked why, most of the surveyors that did not consider organ donation stated that they have more important things to spend their time in like their studies, getting a job, spending their time as a youth with as much bliss as possible and more. This goes to show that youths could not be bothered to think about ‘menial things’ like organ donation as they would want to spend their time for themselves before helping others. To solve this problem, I recommend that we should spread the message to them that you could not only feel complete or have fun not only by doing things for yourself but also by helping others. This way, youths would be able to spend time considering organ donation, making them less apathetic towards it.

However, some youths are enthusiastic about organ donation as they are willing to help patients in need of organ donations. In order to go for organ transplants, organ recipients must pay a fortune. This website ‘change.org’ is a petition website mostly dominated by youths. There, they are empowered to start campaigns, mobilize supporters, and work with Decision Makers to drive solutions. There is a large amount of organ recipients that have received help by ‘change.org’. For example, a twenty-two-year-old social work student who had a father that was diagnosed with end-stage liver failure, acute kidney failure, and acute hepatitis of the liver, requiring him to need a liver transplant to continue living. The hospital he was at does not have the resources to continue caring for him (or provide a liver transplant) so he needs to be transferred to the U of M Medical Center/Transplant Clinic. However, due to the cause of his condition, the university won’t accept him until he’s on the transplant list which he would need to wait for at least five more months. However, he would not be able to last that long and he needed the transplant as soon as possible. Just because of ‘change.org’, more than ten thousand people have signed the petition to get their father a bed at the clinic. Most of the people who have signed the petition were in fact, youths. This act has shown that not all youths are apathetic towards organ donation as they are willing to help patients in need.

In this essay, I have shared my views on youths being apathetic towards organ donation. Some of them do not show apathy as they are willing to help patients in need of organ donations. However, some youths really are sadly apathetic towards organ donation as they are not aware of the struggles faced by organ recipients and as they do not have the time to consider being an organ donor. These problems could be solved by spreading awareness with speeches about organ patients and spreading the message that helping others as organ donors could be rewarding. After reading this essay, viewers must think of the following question.

Is it truly the youths’ fault for their apathy or society’s fault?

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2021 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health).

To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg