#5. Turning Loss into Life: How One Doctor's Organ-Donation Revolution Is Creating an Extraordinary Legacy

In this revelatory conversation, urologist-turned-activist Dr Sunil Shroff joins AmickyCarol to show how one ordinary surgeon sparked an extraordinary movement—turning India’s reputation for illegal kidney trade into a blueprint for ethical, life-saving transplants. From London’s NHS wards to Chennai’s ICUs, Shroff proves that death can be recast as a celebration of life when families choose to give the gift of organs.

• Started as a urological surgeon in England’s NHS after low pay drove him from India
• Returned 12 years later to confront the country’s underground kidney market
• Pioneered India’s first deceased-donor protocols after the 1994 brain-death law
• Founded MOHAN Foundation to normalise donation through education and coordination
• Devised the “eyes-first” approach that eases families toward full organ consent
• Built hospital-sharing networks so every viable organ finds a recipient
• Trained transplant coordinators who secure 70-80 % consent from grieving families
• Partnered with the UK’s NHS to raise donor rates in minority communities
• Advises 46 Commonwealth nations on best practice in organ procurement
• Offers affordable online courses in transplant coordination, grief counselling and advocacy
• Left full-time surgery in 2015 to devote 70 % of his time to nonprofit work

“Death is not extinguishing light—it’s only putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”
 —Rabindranath Tagore, quoted by Dr Shroff

Take action: Register as an organ donor and tell your family. One donor can save up to eight lives.

Connect with Dr Sunil Shroff & MOHAN Foundation

• Website / Bio: wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunil_Shroff
• MOHAN Foundation site: www.mohanfoundation.org
• Instagram: @mohanfound
• Facebook: @MOHANFoundationIndia
• YouTube: @mohanfoundation
• LinkedIn: /company/mohan-foundation/

Chapters

• 0:45 Dr. Sunil Shroff's Personal Journey
• 5:37 Transitioning to the MOHAN Foundation
• 11:51 Ethics of Spare Kidney Donation
• 15:05 Counselling Families in Grief
• 18:01 Talking to Bereaved Relatives about Donation
• 26:13 Dr. Shroff's Many Achievements and Accolades
• 30:20 Giving Back and Paying Forward
• 31:56 Inspiration from Patients
• 36:45 The Mohan Foundation's Global Impact
• 38:16 Chennai Travel Recommendations
• 40:55 Message to Listeners

Transcript

AmickyCarol: 0:02

Hey, world Changers, welcome to your podcast. I'm Aniki Carroll and I travel the world with a sense of adventure and purpose exploring, learning, having fun and meeting remarkable individuals who are transforming their communities and beyond. Join me as we dive into the inspiring journeys of changemakers from every corner of the globe, tuning in weekly for stories that might just change your life, ignite your passion and show you how ordinary people can create extraordinary impact. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on social media at World Changes PC, and get ready to take off. Okay so, dr Shroff, can you tell me who you are and what you do?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 0:56

So I'm basically a urologist and a transplant surgeon and I qualified way back in 1978. And I was born in a business family. But I wanted to do something different. Okay, so I chose the medical field. It was completely different from business, so that's how I decided to take up the field, and then subsequently, after graduation, I found that the doctors don't make enough money in india and when I was doing my post-graduation after you know, you do your mbbs first and then you could do a post-graduation I got married right and once I got married, I had a young family and I could not support the family with the money which I was getting from a hospital.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 1:47

I was working for the government. So I realized that I can't be dependent on my family to give me money. It was very shameful Twenty-six, twenty-seven year old, still dependent on your family to give you some money to keep your life going and today's world that's more common than you can imagine, I suppose so. So then I decided to go to England, but the prospects were better.

AmickyCarol: 2:10

Right, and what part of India were you before you emigrated to England?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 2:14

So I was actually in a place called Patna where I graduated from. I did my MBBS and post-graduation surgery from Patna, and then I came to Chennai because Chennai is where our Madras is, where my parents used to be. They're still. They're not there anymore, but you know we have a home here. So I came to Chennai to look for jobs. I didn't find anything satisfactory, so that's why I left for England and took the exams there, qualified and started working in the National Health Service. Okay.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 2:47

It was very good for me to do that because you know, till that time my you know perspective and my vision was very folk-limited towards the you know you have a blinkers on kind of thing. So when I went to England I realized how to be a good professional, how to dedicate and do your best to your patients. I didn't learn too much of surgery. I did a lot of surgery in India but what I learned was the professional touch of being a good doctor. That was very important and I realized the ethics of medical profession, how we should keep the ethics of medical. I learned a lot of those good practices. I did learn surgery. I can a lot of those good practices. I did learn surgery. I can't say I didn't learn, but I started my urology career in England.

AmickyCarol: 3:31

Okay, really.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 3:32

Yes, I didn't do any urology in India, oh interesting.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 3:37

So urology is a science where, you know, we don't necessarily cut, as a surgeon, yeah, the body. We go through the natural passages and look inside the body and do the treatment, okay, so they're called. In fact, the urologists are called the peeping toms of mother nature. So that's what I. I was very fascinated because we were operating the camera, looking at the screen, looking inside the body. So urology is, you know, one is one of the subspecialties of medicine which has really helped the surgical aspects of medicine to grow towards a non-invasive way of doing things, where you don't necessarily cut the body, you go through small holes and are able to achieve the same results which you do with an open procedure. So that way the patient has less pain and less downtime, less discomfort, less downtime, yep. So we admit a patient, let's say today, tomorrow, they have surgery, day after they're home, yeah, so that is what the incredible thing about urology is. So we were the ones who actually started the whole non-invasive way of doing surgery in the body Not many people know that and then the gynecologists took on a little bit and today, of course, the whole surgical field is a non-invasive way.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 4:56

The general surgeons and everybody, the ENT people, the neurosurgeons. They all want to do it non-invasive way, because you cause less trauma to the body and the healing is better. And with all the technology today available, it is much easier to be able to do things with precision because the magnification is so big on the big screen. So you know, with all the robotics available, medical science has really advanced.

AmickyCarol: 5:21

It really has.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 5:22

Especially in the last 25-30 years.

AmickyCarol: 5:25

And now with AI.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 5:26

With AI exactly. So you know things have gone very fast. So urology was one specialty which actually, you know, took surgical field towards that side.

AmickyCarol: 5:37

Yeah, and how did you transition from urology to running the Mohan Foundation?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 5:42

Oh, that's somewhat a long story but I'll try and make it concise. So I went to England in 1983. Okay, I learned my kidney transplants in England and I came back in 1995. Okay, in India, unfortunately, a lot of organ commerce was happening. People used to buy kidneys from poor people who used to donate and a lot of Arabs from the Middle East used to come to India to get a kidney transplant. So there was an exploitation of poverty and this used to be flashed in big news when I was in England and my fellow colleagues would be, you know, smirking at me many times saying you're going back to India, are you going to do all this? Obviously, and you know, in England I was kind of representing the one billion people You're defending your country.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 6:44

Yeah, tell me about it. So sometimes you'd feel very shameful of that and that would keep me. Sometimes it used to keep me awake at night because I used to think I'm going to go back. How am I going to live? What kind of practice am I going to develop? Am I going to get into this kind of cesspool of foreign commerce to survive? So that kind of kept me always thinking.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 7:06

But I always wanted to come back. I wanted to come back because I felt a bit alien, I must say, in England, though I could speak English. But I always felt like a second-class citizen and I lived there for 12 years and I always thought I don't belong here. I must go back to India and I had trained well in England. I had worked in some good hospitals and I had trained very well and my consultants were ready to support me, to put me in another hospital where I could be a consultant. I was very happy with my worth, but I had decided in my head that I must go back.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 7:49

Many people don't return back to their countries after having spent so long in a more advanced country like England. But I decided to come and I also promised my mom that I'll come back, and she used to always keep me reminded when are you coming back? And that used to stay on my mind. And my children were growing and I felt that they should have a feed of the country where I come from, where they come from, and then they can decide where they want to go. And when I came back, I started the program in a teaching hospital called Sri Ramachandra. So at that time law for organ donation had just been passed in India. This is a separate law Because the government of India was on the defensive with all the organ commerce happening. They wanted to put a stop to it. So the laws made organ commerce. You know a punishable offense and fines and you know punishment up to three years in jail and so on and they also accepted a new form of death called brain death.

AmickyCarol: 8:56

Wow Okay.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 8:58

You know, normally what happens is the heart comes to a stop and then, you know, the circulation stops and the blood which carries the oxygen and the glucose to all the cells in our body, that stops, and when that happens the cells die. But eventually all death resides in the brain, because if the brain cells die then you can't revive them, whereas if the heart stops you can do a cardiac massage and sometimes you can revive the heart. But if the brain dies you can't revive them. Yeah, whereas if the heart stops you can do a cardiac massage and sometimes you can revive the heart. Yeah.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 9:27

But if the brain dies you can't revive it. So there is a condition called brain death where a patient can be on a, you know support machine like a ventilator, where they receive, the respiration is on so that they can get oxygen and circulation is on, for glucose can be circulated yeah so in that kind of situation, if a patient is brain is gone, whether blood supply to the brain is gone, that person is brain dead. Right in that situation you can donate your whole body, oh, all the organs okay almost eight organs, all the cells, all the tissues, almost 50 tissues.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:06

So you can donate a heart, two lungs, pair of lungs, pair of kidneys, liver, pancreas, intestine, hand, so many things you can donate. Eyes, eyes, eyes is eye can also be donated after natural death. Yeah, you don't have to be brain dead.

AmickyCarol: 10:20

Oh, really oh wow.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:22

Eye donation In India. We do a lot of eye donations at home.

AmickyCarol: 10:30

Okay when a person dies within six hours six to twelve hours.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:32

you can donate eyes. Oh, that's fantastic, yes, so that eye donation is easier. Okay, you know, just like blood donation.

AmickyCarol: 10:35

Yeah.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:35

Blood also is a kind of a fluid organ.

AmickyCarol: 10:37

Okay.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:38

So the most common donation is blood.

AmickyCarol: 10:40

Yes.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:40

And then eyes and then other organs. Yeah, so when I came to India there was organ commerce happening, but the government had passed a law. I came back in 1995 and the law was just passed in 1994.

AmickyCarol: 10:53

The law actually deterred the organ commerce.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 10:56

Organ commerce and also accepted brain death as form of death.

AmickyCarol: 10:59

Okay, did it deter it? Did it stop, put it to a halt?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 11:03

No, it didn't bring in. That's another aspect. It didn't bring an end to it because there's always this demand and supply problem in kidney and other organs. So there was. It definitely curbed it. It completely did not eliminate it.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 11:16

But definitely brought it down. But the good thing was it also passed the law of brain death that you can do organ donation if they are brain dead, and that's 80% of all transplants happening in all over the world, especially in developed countries like England, are after brain death or after natural death, Whereas in India 80% of transplants were in living situation.

AmickyCarol: 11:40

What.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 11:41

Living person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a pair of kidneys, yeah. So we always say care for one and spare donation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a pair of kidneys, yeah. So we always say you care for one and spare one.

AmickyCarol: 11:48

Yeah, so that's the I'm actually curious Is it a good idea, if you don't have to, to actually donate your spare kidneys? Because I've heard people say, oh, you have two and you only need one to live.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 12:01

So if you are healthy and you only need one to live, so if you are healthy and you have low risk factors, then you can. And there are a lot of these donations called altruistic donations, which are non-directed. You donate to anyone, so that is a provision available, and 15% of all transplants which are done in the United States are done by these kind of donations, altruistic donations.

AmickyCarol: 12:22

And what's the impact on the living donor.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 12:31

Does it reduce the quality of life in any way? No, really. The living donor is more healthy than a normal person.

AmickyCarol: 12:35

Because we don't just take out a kidney.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 12:36

We do a lot of investigations to ensure that you live to be healthy. So normally the quality of life is good, especially if you do it out of altruism.

AmickyCarol: 12:46

Yes.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 12:47

You know you want to help somebody. In that case, and in the long term, the only thing is they feel that you may have a slightly higher incidence of hypertension, blood pressure possibly, but generally speaking, they have a healthy life. Okay. But having said that, in India we have smaller kidneys compared to the Western world Interesting, yeah, so in India also the incidence of diabetes is blood sugar.

AmickyCarol: 13:14

Yeah.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 13:15

And hypertension is high. Okay, so we are a bit worried because we are prone to that genetically. So we are worried that if a young person donates in India, then at a later age they could develop this and they develop a kidney failure. So we don't have a long-term study. Overall, the disease donation is less risky, whereas a person is already dead and they donate organs. And you asked me a question why did you start bone-form?

AmickyCarol: 13:39

donation I did. You know we're gonna get to it. Now I'm getting to it.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 13:44

So when I came back from England, I had trained myself in disease donation after brain death donation, and nobody was doing it. The law was there. It's been passed, so it was some kind of a message from the perhaps I don't know from where that you should get into this.

AmickyCarol: 13:57

You were divinely directed.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 13:59

Perhaps. So when I started I first did this disease donation in my own hospital, there was a lot of resistance because something new to adapt is very not so easy. So there was a lot of resistance but slowly I managed to convince my administrators and my top management and I did a lot of workshops in the hospital. I did a lot of awareness in my hospital and we made disease donation happen in my hospital. So I realized the challenges in disease donation, how it is a big teamwork, there are so many stakeholders involved in this and it's not easy to do and it disrupts your whole kind of routine, normal routine of work.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 14:38

But it happens in the middle of the night. You're operating the whole night. Again, you come back next day to work. So I realized that this requires a little bit different approach and it requires a lot of training, it requires a lot of awareness, it requires certain policy changes. So that's why in 1997, I came back in 1995. In 1995-97, we started this non-government organization called Mohan to become a support group for the whole organ donation, disease donation program in the country and that's how we started. So the first one or two years we did a lot of awareness in the society, especially in Chennai, where we started, and then we went on to do other things like training, capacity building in the program, with not only training for people who will support the family. How do you ask for organs for the relatives when somebody is dead?

AmickyCarol: 15:30

such a different conversation at the time when they're most vulnerable, and absolutely so.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 15:37

You know, people get, people are angry, people are frustrated and at that time you would ask for. It's not an easy ask. So we started looking at all these areas and then realized that nobody really wants to approve the family road donation. But eye donation is very popular. So we devised a mechanism ask for eyes first, test it, and you say yes for eyes, ask for the organs. So we made the ask a little easier for the intensive care people. But they refused to ask. So then I realized that first I have to do this. So then we put this little caveat that do this, it may work and many people would not hesitate to ask for eyes. Ask for eyes, wait for some time, say. They say yes, then you ask, you tell them that you have this option of donating other organs of your loved ones as well.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 16:26

And that also you know that the penny dropped and people started using that approach.

AmickyCarol: 16:31

I mean, you've already donated some, so these are all simple.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 16:34

You know ways of making sure that you, how to make this difficult program easier. So we started doing all this training all the counselors on how to they're called transplant coordinators how to do counseling for grief, how to support the family. Many families say yes, many families say no more families just say no. But if you continue to support the family, many of those no's will turn to yes subsequently. You just have to support them. You know, just take care of them in their moment of trauma, in their moment of trauma, in their moment of grief, extreme grief. Just support them with emotional support, take care of their small needs. They may be hungry, they may be thirsty, they may just want to sit somewhere alone.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 17:19

You know, grief is something, again, which is very personal to everybody. Everybody handles grief in a different way. But there are various stages of grief. Yes, you know, the first is, you know, the first stage is, you know, denial. It can't happen to me. The second stage is anger. Why it happened to me? Yeah, and then you know, after anger, you know, then there is, you know, a little quietness, a little acceptance and depression. So there are various stages of grief. So we teach our coordinators or counselors how to handle those various stages. Some people go through the stages. They are just stuck in one stage and some will move on. So we did that.

AmickyCarol: 18:01

What's the window of opportunity? Because I remember I mean, I was bereaved 20-something years ago, 25 years ago deeply, and I remember being thrown into the different stages. I can't imagine how I would have reacted if somebody had asked me for any organs at that time, because it was very hard, Acceptance was very hard for me and I remember going back to the hospital the next day, fully expecting the person to wake up.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 18:39

And so what's the window of opportunity in that case? You know, we don't have too much of time in that because patients are very critical once they're brain dead. So we would probably, you know, sometimes you'd have just to have 24 hours, sometimes you could have a few days, three or four days, yes, so it all varies, yeah, but on an average about two or three days you get Okay. In that period you have to consult the family, take care of them, yeah. So if they're pre-sensitized, if, if they already know about Brendan, then it is a lot easier. But if they're not sensitized to the cause, that's where awareness helps. You know, carrying a donor card in your wallet and a driving license, so you're already, you know, kind of sensitized. So the family knows about it the decision to say yes is easier.

AmickyCarol: 19:18

Yes, of course.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 19:19

Whereas if you're not sensitized to it, then the decision can be like a shock.

AmickyCarol: 19:24

Do you still need consent after the person dies, even if they were carrying a?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 19:28

donor? Yes, you do need. It's called informed consent. They may have changed their view, all you know. So you still need yes, whereas you know in certain countries it's called presumed consent, where the state will presume that you're an organ donor unless you express and say no, I don't want to be an organ donor. Do you agree with that? No, that takes away your right.

AmickyCarol: 19:51

Okay.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 19:51

So Spain does that and they have a good success rate, apparently as such. But I think you know it's more to do with sensitization. So when you pass something like this, what happens is the citizens know about it, Whereas nobody is going to discuss a morbid topic like organ donation. They are throwing rumours into the bedroom, Whereas this kind of clause which is there in the law makes people at school level, college level, discuss it. So I think that's where the difference is more than anything else, and, as you said, it's very difficult when you go through it yourself. When somebody approaches, it comes like a shock, yeah, but then what you think about is you come from dust and you go back to dust. So if your loved one is dead, you're going to cremate them or you're going to bury them.

AmickyCarol: 20:40

And it's quite common here to cremate people. Yeah, yeah, so there's nothing left. In any case, backrashes yeah.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 20:47

So, you can actually request a family that this life I mean your loved one is gone and this can help another seven, eight people to get a new life. Many will go back, think about it and come back and say go ahead and do it. And many of these patients are road traffic accidents. They're young people, unfortunately. So you see, death is always traumatic, but in a young death it's more traumatic. But if they continue to live in somebody else, if the heart continues to beat in somebody else, the eyes continue to see the beautiful world, it makes a logical kind of sense to do that. So many people will say yes.

AmickyCarol: 21:28

It's an enduring act of kindness. It's an enduring act.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 21:31

Absolutely. You put it so well. It is an enduring act of kindness, A legacy which you leave behind. Absolutely, you know, a wonderful legacy. A very noble act, yeah, More noble than the most noble act in fact of life. So many will say yes to donation that way, yeah. So we kind of train. We over the years have learned how to train these counselors and our counselors when they go on the ground and speak to the family and support them. Their success rate is 70-80%. So this is where the NHSBT came in, because the NHSBT were having problems with the consent rate in the BAME community.

AmickyCarol: 22:11

That's true, because they've actually come to one of our events. You're right, they are desperate to reach people.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 22:19

So their consent rate in BAME community is between 30% to 40%, whereas the white population the consent rate is almost 70%. Wow, and the waiting list, because the BAME community patients, like I told you, south Asians especially, have a smaller kidney and diabetes is more common, so the waiting list and the number of patients going on waiting list is higher from the Black population.

AmickyCarol: 22:44

Really, are Black people also predisposed to having smaller kidneys?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 22:48

No, not necessarily.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 22:51

But they are prone to diabetes and organ failure hypertension, so that way they are more prone to organ failure. So the waiting list for BAME community is higher than the white population in proportion, whereas the donation rate is lower. So when NHS saw our success rate of 70% in India, that's when they realized that we should have the expertise on how to counsel families and that's why I signed the MOU in House of Lords and had an MOU with NHSBT and NHS. Blood and Transplants is called to see whether we can share some good practices and help the BAME communities concentrate to go up.

AmickyCarol: 23:30

That's fantastic.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 23:31

And that's where we signed the MOU in 2015 with NHSBT in the House of Lords.

AmickyCarol: 23:38

I really think culturally we've got to find a way of having those conversations.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 23:44

Yes, absolutely.

AmickyCarol: 23:45

It's extraordinary some of the things that I hear people certainly from my culture say some people have this belief that they should be buried whole.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 23:56

Yes, I mean. What does it matter?

AmickyCarol: 23:58

All of that whole will turn into dust.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 24:01

Exactly, eventually. Eventually yeah, so if you look at the larger cosmos kind of philosophy of this cosmos which has got almost 3 trillion or something planets and so many stars that we all apparently have come from the big bang, our atoms, our atoms in the body, be it hydrogen, be it oxygen, be nitrogen, be it carbon, it is all being recycled. You can't destroy atoms right so we are made of atoms. Okay, so we will go back. You know, we came from those atoms and we'll go back as atoms.

AmickyCarol: 24:39

Okay, not everybody shares that view. Some people, you know, have a more spiritual.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 24:46

So there are two things you may believe in soul and you may believe in body. Right, I'm only talking about the body and the spirit. I'm talking only about the body.

AmickyCarol: 24:54

There's even the extra layer of spirits, so it's not just soul and body.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 24:58

Yeah, whatever, but your body is made of, you know, certain masses. You've got protein, you've got carbohydrates, you've got fat Dust we come and dust we return. We have to go back because that's where all the atoms will come from. Be different, you know that's more abstract, yeah, but the body. We are only talking about the body yes, yeah the body can be, you know. That's why you say we can recycle your body. Yes, and that's the reason the ultimate recycle.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 25:25

So you know, don't be so possessive about yourself. You have to go back to the earth for where you came, yeah, so if you do that, you might as well help a fellow human being, who may be young and who has a chance to live, provided you say yes to donations.

AmickyCarol: 25:41

For something that's useless to you.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 25:43

Useless to you exactly, and that's why you say death is not death. Death can be celebration of life.

AmickyCarol: 25:48

Yes, absolutely yeah. That is the ultimate celebration of life.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 25:52

Celebration of life. That's why, you know our we have a very famous Nobel laureate, who got you know, called Ravindra Tagore, in India. Okay, so he said death is not extinguishing light, but putting out a lamp because the dawn has come. So he's, in a way, talking about our generation. That dawn is dawn of our generation, you know. So.

AmickyCarol: 26:13

I'm aware that you work in so many different places. Can you just tell me the extent of the work now, like since that time? You've done a lot, you've accomplished a lot. Just walking in here I saw so many awards, you know, and recognition pieces, and rightly so. So if you could just speak a little bit to how the work has gone.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 26:34

When you start, you don't know where you're heading. Nobody works for these awards.

AmickyCarol: 26:39

So true.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 26:40

It is just something which you gather on the way, yeah. So when we started we didn't, as I said, we didn't know how far we'll go, how long we'll last. But you know, there was a huge vacuum of requirement in this area and we were the only ones, in a way, who were doing it full time. So we started in a very small way with having one or two people and I put in my own money initially. You know you need to give salaries and so on. So initially we did that and we started with awareness building in the community. And then we started thinking that awareness is not enough.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 27:18

So we started what is called organ sharing between hospitals, because when you have an organ donor, then there are multiple organs which come out. So if a hospital only has a kidney recipient, doesn't have a liver recipient or heart recipient, that obviously is wasted. So after awareness, we started an organ sharing network in Chennai, but in different hospitals we were doing transplant, so that we had a waiting list of different organs and if there was no requirement in that hospital, that organs can be shared in the community. But we felt that the organs belonged to the community, not to the hospital. It's being given for charity. So a hospital doesn't have the right to keep the organs. So we had six hospitals which were sharing organs. So we started an organ sharing network in the country first time. And then when was this? This was way back in the year 1999, 2000.

AmickyCarol: 28:07

Okay, quite early on.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 28:08

Early on yes, Very early we had actually done a function to honor some of our donor families, to bring them on a stage to honor them and listen to their stories, and this was in 1999. And we had a wonderful college, so we did it in that campus and we planted trees in memory of planted saplings in memory of our donors at that time, and we put a nice plaque in the playground there, you know. So that function was very moving. In that function we realized that it is just not. Awareness was not enough. We needed to do training. We needed to, you know, do online sharing and so on. We needed to support the families afterwards in grief, Somebody needs to go to their house or wherever they lived and speak to the families, look at their requirements. So we realized to not lot more as an organization, as a non-profit, and that's why we got into organ sharing first. And once we started doing in tamil nadu, we started working well.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 29:07

In chennai, other states joined in and they wanted the same thing to be done there. So they called us to other states and that's how we grew. We grew very organically. We grew because people wanted us to be there in their state. You know, India is a big country. We have 37 states and union territories and some regions are doing better in healthcare than other regions. So whichever region was doing well in healthcare wanted the same program in their state. So they called us. So we started another office. So that's how we grew and are you in all states?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 29:38

No, no, not all states, but we are in about quite a few states. We have nine offices, starting from a place called Chandigarh, in Punjab, delhi, which is our capital. Then we have in Jaipur, then we have in Mumbai, bombay, hyderabad, all important areas, nagpur, then Bangalore, chennai, trivandrum. Then we also have in the northeast, called Imphal. There's a big region of India northeast, so Imphal is a place in Manipur, so we have an office there as well. And last week I went to another state in northeast called Tirupura, and we are hoping to start an office there soon. But when you do all this work, you know you're always dependent on resources you know what I was thinking.

AmickyCarol: 30:22

You started off not wanting to earn peanuts and then now you've come into the charity world and clearly you're not, you know, raking in the millions. So your heart must have really been transformed somewhere along the way, where you decided to prioritize important things and not money.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 30:42

Yes, in 2015, I was working in a hospital as a surgeon. I was making enough. I had worked in England for 12 years, so I was never short on my requirements financially. I was only short for requirements financially when I graduated. Once I went to England, I had a decent life, obviously, and when I came back from England with NHS, pension and so on, I was quite happy. I knew my requirements were taken care of. So in 2015, I quit my full-time job as a surgeon in the hospital, as a urologist, and I took part-time work. I gave more time to non-profit, which is now, you know, growing to so many places. I felt that the next 10 years or 15 years of my active life, if I gave it to this charity, it would be very more meaningful to me and to the society and we do a lot more good. Just like you took a call, I took a call too, and in 2015, I quit my full-time job and started doing almost. I give 70% of my time to charity.

AmickyCarol: 31:48

That's fantastic. Honestly, you've been running this organization now for 27 years 27, 28 years. Yeah, really 28 years. Is there one story of your recipients I'm sure there will be countless or is there one that particularly touches you, that you'd like to share with us the reason why you do this?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 32:08

You say that. But I'll tell you every story is unique because the story starts when a patient's family walks into my room and they require a transplant and they don't have necessarily an organ donor in their family who can donate, because families are small now. Somebody may have sugar, somebody may have something else going on, the blood group may not match. The story starts with the pain in the eyes. That's what hits you very hard, a very silent pain. You know that hits you very hard and you just look at them and there's a very what should I call it a very? The connect is very fast. You know a very unspoken connect. You look at them, know what is happening. They sit down in front of you and you know that they don't have any donor and they are pushed against the wall. They don't know what to do Either to buy an organ that's one option they have, which I say no, you're not going to do that or one of them donates, or they go on the list for a disease donation. So many will go on the disease donation list and get a transplant and we've had a lot of success stories on this.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 33:23

Many of the patients, when we started this programme at first, were very diffident about this disease donation. They didn't know if the organ would work. And I've had situations where I have actually gone and told this person who was waiting for a kidney transplant and we had a disease donor and this was the initial days of the program and we didn't have a long waiting list. So I told this guy he was about 60 years old I said this is like a big lottery more than a million dollar lottery. Don't realize this.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 33:51

He was not very sure of taking the organ. He said I'm not sure it will work or not. So I had to literally convince him. I counseled him for half an hour, we transplanted him and then he went on to live for a good 20 years. Wow, so we had some incredible kind of these kind of things where this is where you know this is. If it was somebody else in my place, I think would have just taken the no, for no, this guy's life would have changed. He would continue to be on dialysis. How long will it last? No one knows.

AmickyCarol: 34:25

And it just depletes your resources Absolutely.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 34:29

But the first patient I did in India. When I came back in 95, 96, I did my first disease donation. That's also a very unique story. We had a young boy of 12 who was playing in the garden and was bit by a snake and he got brain dead and he was in my ICU for five days.

AmickyCarol: 34:47

Okay, let's rush past this snake bite story. What kind of snake and what part of India? Because I need to stay away from there. What kind of snake and what part of India, because.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 34:56

I need to stay away from there. So actually this was in a slightly rural setup, okay, and it was a cobra.

AmickyCarol: 35:03

Wow.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 35:03

Most likely. Okay, the snake cobra has what is called neurotoxin. It hits your nerves. So the cobras bite. From what we knew. Okay, and this is just an accident, to be honest? Yeah, of course it's an accident. It's not going to bite, you don't worry.

AmickyCarol: 35:17

I'm not going to those rural areas. It is not going to bite me.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 35:24

So that's, it was a snake bite, okay, but the thing about this fish was that he's a 12-year-old. So we waited for four or five days thinking that the venom may go away, the boy may wake up. He didn't wake up and since he was brain dead, the father was very kind of you know, very depressed. He said, doc, do what you think is right, and he agreed to our donation. We donated, he donated organs of his son, so we got at that time two kidneys and one heart from the boy, and I transplanted both the kidneys into two women, one a 48-year-old, another a 52. And it continued Even, in fact, I lost contact with one of them, but the other one is still coming to me or follow up. They're still alive, doing well, free of dialysis. I mean, these are incredible stories of transformation of life, yeah.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 36:17

And I hope the boy's father can take comfort in that, yes, looking at your three people having a second chance in life, yes, you know that's the ultimate, the best thing that could happen. That's why I say it's not death. It can be converted to celebration to some extent.

AmickyCarol: 36:34

The way I think about it, I converted to celebration to some extent. The way I think about it, I think about it as sustainable living. We make so much noise about the environment, about reusing things, recycling things. Why can't we reuse the parts and recycle them just as diligently as we do everything else? And this is ultimately even better than all the other things, because this concerns human lives.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 36:59

Absolutely, and it also creates that harmony, a better kind of good feel factor. With all the bad things happening in the world, we need good stories.

AmickyCarol: 37:12

It also means that it's not only people who have money that have access to stories. Yes, it also means that it's not only people who have money that have access to life. You know, if we're all a little bit more altruistic about our body parts, we give other people, ordinary people, a chance.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 37:27

But you know, it is the ordinary people who do extraordinary things.

AmickyCarol: 37:29

Yeah, that's true, that's right. World changers Ordinary people. World changers ordinary people like you, doing extraordinary things.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 37:35

No, at least I have had an education and I've, you know, had a good life. But there are people who have illiterate, who don't know anything. I had a neighbor who donated the organs of his son, the poor guy, you know, even the dress he was wearing was a tatters, but he went on to say yes to donation, you know. So that's why I'm saying that's the ordinary people doing some extraordinary deeds of kindness.

AmickyCarol: 38:00

And the people with the least are usually the most generous.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 38:02

Yes, so those deeds of kindness are extreme and that's what redeems your faith in humanity generally. So you know, that's why I said ordinary people do some extraordinary deeds and that's why I said already we will do some extraordinary deeds and that's why we need to make this world better to live with.

AmickyCarol: 38:16

Listen, it's really fascinating talking to you, and we could go on and on and on, but I want to honor the fact that this is also a travel podcast and you've lived here in Chennai for a long time here in Chennai for a long time. If somebody wanted to visit Chennai, what would you? Recommend that they do Apart from stopping by to pay you a visit. Of course, yeah. What area are you in, by the way?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 38:40

What do you mean In Chennai? Yeah, yeah, it's called Kilpauk in Chennai.

AmickyCarol: 38:44

Kilpauk, kilpauk. Okay, great, and so what is there to do in Chennai?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 38:55

So I think Chennai has got a long history and there are some very good places.

AmickyCarol: 38:58

Near Chennai there's a place called Mahabalipuram, the stone city. Sorry, the stone city, stone yeah, it's very beautiful.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 39:03

There are some very ancient temples there which you can visit and you just reconnect to in time. You walk the same street which has been walked by your, maybe 1,000 years back by somebody else, so you can reconnect, so you can do that. It's got a very long beach, the sea beach, and you can walk the sand, but beaches are relatively clean so you can walk on the sand.

AmickyCarol: 39:29

Is it truly the longest beach in the world? Second longest, second longest, ok, second longest, second longest, ok, all right.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 39:34

It's pretty long you can keep walking and the sand part of the beach is very it's almost there for longer too. It's not that the beach the sea starts, I mean ends, and there's not much sand. So you can walk on the sand for quite some distance. So you can do that. And then there is a fort called the St George Fort. There's a museum, and Chennai is very rich culturally. In the month of December, if they come, there are a lot of music festivals which happen, and that's what Chennai is now famous for the musical festivals, the Indian musical festivals. So you can enjoy those festivals and it goes on for a month and most of the tickets are free.

AmickyCarol: 40:13

Oh, wow.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 40:14

And there are some great musicians who come to Chennai and it's been going on like a tradition for a very long time. So if they visit in December, January, they can do that.

AmickyCarol: 40:22

Yeah, even the museums aren't very expensive for a foreigner.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 40:26

It's very, very yeah. So there are plenty of things to do in Chennai.

AmickyCarol: 40:29

And of course the food.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 40:31

Food. Yes, food is a bit spicy and the food is a little different from what you get in North India is all about variety, it is. You know, what you get in North India will be different from South India, so you can enjoy those idlis and dosas.

AmickyCarol: 40:46

Yes, the dosa.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 40:47

They're quite interesting.

AmickyCarol: 40:49

So really nice food. I thoroughly enjoyed my food here. Okay, so just to finish, what is the one thing that you'd like anyone to know? Really One thing. If you had the opportunity to say one thing to my listeners, what would it be?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 41:07

I think you know definitely I would say that you know donate your organs and save lives. That's my byline that everybody should consider organ donation as the act of kindness and they should think about it and, more importantly, they should speak to their families and tell them that you wish to be an organ donor, because once you die, somebody has to inform the doctors. So that conversation is very important. So that will be one thing I would definitely like to convey to your business that do consider organ donation, because there are, you know, lakhs and lakhs of people who are waiting for an organ and the way to do it, it could be you Exactly. So the waiting list is pretty long and increasing incidence, because we're also living longer, that's true, and transplantation can transform lives, it can get you back to normal life and today, in the medical field, it is doable, we can recycle ourselves. So I definitely want you to give that message.

AmickyCarol: 42:11

That's wonderful. I know you run some courses as well. Yes. And so we're going to link to them, but very quickly, what are the courses that you run and what are they?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 42:20

So we run some interesting courses. We run courses on how to do the whole transplant coordination when there's a disease donor. So we have a month-long course. We have a year-long course online which you can learn from your home. We have trained more than 4,000 people on these courses. We have short courses on how to do grief counseling. How to do grief counseling. We have courses for intensive care people how to do brain death certification. We have apps available free of cost on how to certify brain death, how to maintain a brain death. They're all very complex areas.

AmickyCarol: 42:58

And how do people access these? These are all available online through our website, so we're going to link to all of them.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 43:05

We have an ambassador's course. See, if you want to be an ambassador for our organization, you want to be a volunteer. You need to have the right information. So we have a one day volunteer kind of program which is mostly online. First you learn online four hours of online learning about what is organ donation, which organs to donate, how to take care of your organs, and then you have interaction with some stakeholders, like a donor, family, a recipient, a doctor. You have interaction on web through a video call video where all these people come and then you go and do some activities. So this is called an ambassador's program. So we have that course and we have a course on how to write your reports, a medical writing course.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 43:49

So we have some very interesting courses which we have developed over the years and these are very interactive. They're not just you keep talking in the course and giving lectures. They're very interactive where every five minutes there's a question interposed and you answer the question. Then you proceed.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 44:04

So I think one of the reasons why we have such a high impact in India is because our courses are so well done and we run a lot of training, and today, 10% of our participants are not necessarily from India. They're coming from abroad because our courses are so nominally costed, relatively so cheap compared to some of the courses being offered by some of the Western universities. Our courses are very reasonable For $10, you may get a full course or you know, and so on. The price is a little variable, but none of the courses are more than two hundred dollars. Two hundred dollars is a course for the whole year where you get four hundred hours of learning. So our courses are done well and I think that's one of the reasons why we have succeeded in taking this message forward to the people. We have more than 400 volunteers who are taking our ambassadors course. We started that in COVID, by the way. Wow, because COVID was really, you know, put a stop to everything.

AmickyCarol: 45:02

Yeah, of course.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 45:03

Since we were online, we could easily migrate to you know, doing these courses for even the general public, to create awareness, and that's when we started the online course for ambassadors for our donation.

AmickyCarol: 45:14

That's great, and do you have any partnerships around the world? Yes, and I'm just wondering do you know the state of?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 45:21

Yes, In fact, I told you about NHSBT the UK. In fact, you know, because the NHSBT was successful, the partnership, we thought that why not include it with the Commonwealth? So the 54 Commonwealth countries now of them 46 are on board for taking the good practices across the world. So we have what is called a Tribute to Life Commonwealth project. So we have a partnership with that. We have partnership with some of the you know organizations in the US, so we do have a lot of partnerships going around.

AmickyCarol: 45:53

I'm actually intrigued by the eight Commonwealth countries that are not yet on board.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 45:59

So these are very small countries. The Commonwealth countries are a population of 5,000, 10,000. Also they're small islands.

AmickyCarol: 46:08

OK, are we talking about Comoros and Comoros?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 46:12

Yes, could be. I don't even know some of the names, so they don't have a proper structure. So many are these countries, so some of them have not gone on board but they don't have a program and they don't know how to get onto the program. But in a year or two we have managed to get to 46 countries on board, I know.

AmickyCarol: 46:31

That's impressive. That's not easy.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 46:34

So we are getting there. Perhaps we'll get all the countries. The smaller ones are a little challenge to get on board.

AmickyCarol: 46:41

What does it take to get them on board?

Dr Sunil Shroff : 46:42

Nothing. It's just their will to say yes to donation and yes to the whole idea of sharing good practices. Someone from the Ministry of Health yeah, Ministry of Health, yes exactly. Or from hospitals, will come on board. It's not so difficult. We only are trying it's financially neutral and we're only trying to get them on board to give them the best practices and learn from each other. Because, see, in London you'll find that there's the whole variety of people living there from all over the world. So London is like a micro world by itself.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 47:15

It is. It's a good place to do all your experiments, that kind of thing with the community Interesting, so the diversity of people there are a good test case and that's why we realized that it's better to. If you want to influence that community in London, you have to influence that person's country rather than influencing them here. Not just the diaspora, not the diaspora exactly.

AmickyCarol: 47:43

Because you made a point earlier on most people in the diaspora don't go back, don't go back. That's just the reality. That's the reality and that's unfortunate, but there are all sorts of reasons why. So yeah, you're absolutely correct, you need to go back to source.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 47:59

Yes, that's why it's so important the project, that if we it'll take time, but if you go back and change that, everything will change, and that's what we are hoping for.

AmickyCarol: 48:10

Culture change, mindset shift, all of that.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 48:13

That paradigm takes a long time to shift the mind. It's not so simple.

AmickyCarol: 48:18

But it's not impossible.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 48:19

Not impossible at all. When we started way back in 1995 in India they said it was impossible. Even the word impossible says I am possible.

AmickyCarol: 48:27

Absolutely.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 48:28

So that's what we think.

AmickyCarol: 48:29

You just need ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Absolutely, dr Sh. Just need ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Is that it Absolutely, absolutely. Dr, Shroff, thank you so much. It's been wonderful to talk to you and I can't wait to continue this partnership that we've started. Thank you, you truly are a world changer. Thank you. I'm sure people would be better off now knowing about what you do, but also being inspired to get on board and do the same, because it is very important.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 48:54

I think you know people should not stop dreaming. If they want to do something, they should do it. You should just take that forward and you'll get your goal eventually. Don't look for results. Just keep doing your what we call your karma. Keep doing what is right for you and right for the people. I will get there.

AmickyCarol: 49:12

Well, thank you everyone for joining us today, and we can't wait to see you next time.

Dr Sunil Shroff : 49:16

Thank you All the best.

AmickyCarol: 49:19

Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of World Changes Podcast. I hope you're feeling as inspired as I am by today's conversation. Remember the power to create changes within each of us. If Remember the power to create changes within each of us. If you were inspired by today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word and inspire even more world changers. And be sure to follow us on social media at World Changers PC for updates, behind-the-scenes content and more inspiring stories. Until next time, keep exploring, keep making a difference and remember you can be a world changer.

Humanise Live: 50:07

Live. And presented by amici carol, visit the avocado foundationorg to find out more about how the avocado foundation is tackling global inequality through education, stewardship and financial literacy.