♦ World Organ Donation Day is observed every year on August 13 to raise awareness about the life-saving power of organ donation and to honour donors and their families for their selfless contributions.

♦ The world’s first successful organ transplant was on 13 August 1954, when Ronald Lee Herrick donated his kidney to his twin brother.

♦ Dr Joseph Murray, who performed the surgery, later won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for his pioneering work in transplantation.

♦ In India, National Organ Day was initially observed on November 27, starting in 2010, as an initiative of the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO).

♦ Since 2023, it has been marked on August 3 to commemorate India’s first successful deceased-donor heart transplant in 1994.

♦ 2025 theme: “Answering The Call”.