DONATE LIFE

MEET DONATE LIFE’S TEAM
‘We Are Many, But One’
Mr. Nilesh Mandlewala, Founder & President
There is always one person who lays down the very first brick to
build a new initiative. For Donate Life, Mr. Nilesh Mandlewala was
that person.
Mr. Mandlewala who first was a successful businessman in the
textile industry, later became a renowned social worker and is
known for his contributions to various social activities, having
touched a lot of lives.
Today, he wholeheartedly dedicates most of his time to this noble
cause through Donate Life, with a strong vision and an even
stronger conviction. But what gave birth to Donate Life?
In 1997, his father's kidney had failed. He was taken to Mumbai's
Hinduja Hospital to perform an angioplasty on his kidney. Then
onwards, since 2004, his father had to compulsorily go through
dialysis twice a week, as a result. Only those who go through this
extremely painful procedure know how mentally, physically and
financially draining it is. The suffering of Mr. Mandlewala's father
and his family was too much to bear. They had to undergo a lot of
duress which affected them drastically.
But even during this painful time, Mr. Mandlewala thought that if
he had to go through so many difficulties during dialysis, what
would be the condition of the common man? The average
middle-class common man of India can barely afford that highly
expensive cost of dialysis, let alone cope with the mental trauma
that the entire family goes through when one person in the family
is affected. He wondered that couldn't all the problems faced by
the patients and their families end by organ transplantation?
Just like a butterfly is born only out of a painful struggle in its
cocoon, Mr. Mandlewala started his efforts towards spreading
awareness for the cause of organ donation when his father
underwent such a traumatic period.
Mr. Mandlewala was the Honorary Secretary of The Southern Gujarat Chamber Of Commerce &
Industry (SGCCI) and used to meet a lot of people from various fields. During this time, he met the
President of Gujarat's Chamber Of Commerce, Mr. Chinubhai Shah, who was associated with an
organisation that worked for kidney diseases awareness, called ‘India Renal Foundation'. Impressed
by the knowledge that Mr. Mandlewala had about kidneys and how inclined he was to spread
awareness about the cause, Mr. Shah asked him to join ‘India Renal Foundation'. Mr. Mandlewala
agreed and began educating people about how to take care of their kidney health.
It is during his mission to spread awareness about kidney health, he realised that in a 125
crore-people-strong country, most of the kidney transplants were live donations. The number of
cadaveric donations from brain dead people accounted for only 1-2% of the total donations. He got
know that while the number of people who die due to an accident was around 1.5lakh, those who
were brain-dead or died from a brain stroke were a lot more. 5 lakh people died every year in India
due to non-availability of organs for transplantation!
While it has been a decade that he has been pro-actively promoting the cause of organ donation and
working 24x7 for it - he did not always receive much support. When he had started spreading
awareness, many people would insult him or even get violent when he used to visit the hospital who
had declared a patient as brain-dead and attempted to convince the patient's family to donate the
patient's organs. But nothing has ever stopped him.
It was very difficult to convince the family members of those who were brain-dead to donate the
person's organs for the benefit of others. Mr. Mandlewala did not give up in spite of a number of
obstacles he faced and continued his movement to spread awareness with renewed vigour. He
contacted various neurosurgeons, neurophysicians and ICU in-charges of almost all hospitals in
Surat and convinced them to contact him should they come across a brain-dead patient. The doctors
agreed to support his cause.
12 13