Organ Donation Talk: Another Step in My Career

I delivered a speech in Kidney Transplant Workshop organized by the Nephrology Unit of UKM Medical Center of Cheras last Saturday. The speech was regarding The Organ Donation from Islamic Perspective.

Held in Bahasa Melayu, I actually replaced the initial speaker i.e. The CEO of Yayasan Ilmuwan, Tuan Shaikh Mohd Saifuddeen who had other commitments to give more attention on. Thanks to him for providing me the notes and other sources before I actually went to the workshop and delivered the speech.

It was my first time to deliver speech in front of people whom mostly I did not know of. Not only that, other speakers in the slot were all doctors and other professionals who had far more experience in their respective fields. However, having the chance to share same rostrum with them was a great experience.

In my speech, I explained the Islamic perspective regarding organ donation which basically has no problem with it as long as the rules and regulations related are carefully followed. Given only 15 minutes, it was actually not enough to describe all things related to it thus I had to choose some important points such as the Quranic verses, hadith from Prophet Muhammad SAW and other quotes from distinctive Ulama', and not to mention the fatwas in Malaysia regarding organ donation.

Taking it as a gear 1 of my career, I am looking forward to doing more things like this in the future as they are not only beneficial for the public to be given the awareness about many contemporary issues, but for my self development also as I love to be challenged with new things and experience.

And yes, if I had to relate this to my academic background, it was useful to learn about Organ Transplantation as one of the syllabuses in Pathology subject when I was in the third year of my biomedical science degree. When the doctors in the slot explained about, for examples, cadaveric donors, anatomy of the kidney and rejection symptoms, I could only smile for those only refreshed the memory when I was sitting in the front row listening to the lecturers.

Some other interesting stories during the workshop:

1. One of the doctors told me it was good to know that actually Islam promoted organ donation because all these while he thought the religion was the reason for the sadly low number of donors among Muslim Malays. He was a Chinese and thus I believe a non-Muslim.
2. One of the committees said to me: Muda lagi rupanya yang bagi speech ni. Biasanya kalau nak cakap hal-hal agama ni, orangnya tua-tua. I smiled, the most that I would do. No further comment. :)
3. After the speech, one of speakers addressed me as an "Ustaz". During Q&A session, one of the audience also did the same thing. Huhu... (Aku dah pakai tak macam Ustaz pun masih dipanggil Ustaz. Redha je la~ :P)