Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

PM's speech declaring August 3 as National Heart Transplantation Day

~I welcome you all to Panchavati – the Heart Transplant Recipients, the Heart Transplant Patients and all the good-hearted ladies and gentlemen who have gathered here this evening.

In particular, my hearty welcome to Dr. Venugopal, the pioneer of heart transplants surgery in India and the moving spirit behind this movement. I recall the excitement, on this day nine years ago, when Dr. Venugopal and his colleagues carried out the first successful heart transplantation in our country. I also recall how, on the occasion of the first anniversary of that momentous event, I had raised the issue in the Lok Sabha and proposed that the House felicitate the team of doctors at AIIMS for their feat. Then, cutting across party lines, honourable members had spoken in high praise of this distinguished achievement.

I was the Leader of the Opposition then. Now I am the Prime Minister. In a sense, I too have been transplanted in this place. What has effected this transplantation is not medical science, but the democratic process in our country. And those who carry it out are not doctors, but ordinary people of India. But the people can do something which even specialised doctors cannot. They can also reverse this ~transplantation~ if they so want and vote leaders out of their offices.

These light-hearted remarks apart, friends, I am truly pleased to participate in this function. I wholeheartedly accept Dr. Venugopal’s request that August 3 be observed every year as the National Heart Transplantation Day. I also give my approval to his other request and declare the Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation (ORBO) as a National Facility.

I am sure that these twin decisions today would go a long way to promote the transplantation campaign in India and save a large number of patients who could benefit from it.

Heart is a very interesting and, in some ways, a unique organ. Only highly specialised doctors may know the structure and functioning of the heart from a medical point of view. But it is one organ whose non-medical functioning – and here I mean the heart’s association with human feelings and emotions – is experienced even by a lay person. The quality of the heart is also used to categorise human beings – such as a kind-hearted person, cold-hearted person, cruel-hearted person and a person with a loving heart.

Come to think of it, it seems to me that knowing the working of the emotional side of the heart is far more difficult than the anatomical side of the heart. Poets, writers and other creative persons have tried it through their art, but have perhaps succeeded only partially.

I have always wondered if it is possible to transplant good thoughts, good feelings and good character into a person. And I have known no other method than education to achieve this purpose – education understood in the broadest sense of the term, as a combination of knowledge as well as values. I am told that modern scientists are calling it Emotional Intelligence or Ethical Intelligence. I think society would benefit immensely by gaining a holistic understanding of man’s intelligence and emotions.

Please accept my heartfelt appreciation for the good work you in AIIMS and other collaborating institutions have been doing. It shows that you are doctors who not only have a good medical knowledge of the heart, but that you also have a good heart – a heart that feels and cares for the patients.

I congratulate Sushmaji for supporting your initiative.

Thank you~.