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Vietnam man sways prejudice, gets people donating bodies

Vietnam man sways prejudice, gets people donating bodies

Sunday, May 03, 2015, 11:24 GMT+7

A Vietnamese man has successfully talked dozens of people into donating their bodies to science following their death, after changing their prejudiced attitude toward the practice from hesitation to willingness.

Over the past seven years, Duong Van Tai, 55, who is working at a bank in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, has been dedicated to his voluntary job as a “body donation consultant.”

His job is considered uncommon in the locale where most people remain clueless about or inherently against the practice of donating bodies after death.

After extending his condolences to the grieving family members and relatives at funerals, Tai brings up the topic of body donation with great caution.

If the people are eager to find out more, he wastes no time in enlightening them about the immense benefits of handing over the deceased’s and their own bodies for medical students’ studies.

Tai also goes to great lengths to clarify the requirements and paperwork by showing them the documents he always has with him.

By doing so, he implicitly ventures a tentative suggestion that his listeners register for body donation. Tai’s father, Nam Tiem, is a revered physician in the province’s Cao Lanh District. 

One day, the old man summoned all his children and insisted that following his death, his remains be donated to the Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy University for students there to practice on.

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Students at the Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy University are seen performing a ritual to pay tribute to body donors in this Tuoi Tre file photo.

Though stunned, his children, including Tai, were all supportive of their father’s audacious decision.

In 2007, when Nam Tiem passed away, his family, relatives and locals witnessed an unprecedented ritual in which his body was not buried in a conventional way but was placed in a metal casket and carried straight to the university instead. 

“During the trip to accompany my father’s remains to the university, I became aware of the lecturers’ and their students’ growing need for human specimens for their studies and research. I then decided I would also register for body donation,” Tai said.

Four years after he received his body donation registry card in 2008, he went on to register for tissue donation to help those desperate for organ transplant.

Tai makes it a point to always keep the body donation documents within reach in his own home, at his workplace, in his parents’ home, and with him whenever he goes so as not to miss any potential donor.

“It requires great tact to try to talk people into giving up their own or their deceased relatives’ bodies for medical causes, as the highly sensitive issue has much to do with people’s religions, beliefs, and common sense,” Tai noted.

Thanks to his witty explanations and the example set by himself, Tai has successfully persuaded over 60 people to register for body donation in the past seven years.

Among them are his mother, wife, siblings, in-laws, friends, and colleagues.

Pham Dinh Huy, one of Tai’s friends, took on the medically significant act himself and influenced eight members of his family to follow suit.

Nguyen Dinh Duc, chair of the provincial Red Cross Society said he is highly appreciative of Tai’s deeds.

Tai occasionally takes a coach to the Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy University, where the bodies of his deceased father, mother and mother-in-law are being kept for medical purposes.

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