K Gangadhara Rao, 80, goes door to door distributing informative leaflets and interacting with those who care to listen. His mission is to educate people to see the need for donating body for transplant and medical research. He cites an American transplant surgeon who believes that a body donar can save lives and provide relief to as many as 17 persons needing organ transplant for survival. Besides eye, the body parts that can be transplanted are kidney, heart, kiver, pancreas, spleen, bone marrow and skin graft.

Mr Rao, a retired government official spends a part of his retirement benefits on the body donation campaign. He has donated his own body to JSS Body Donation Association for use in medical research. Stating that illiteracy, ignorance and superstition were factors that hampered his campaign Mr Rao told Shankar Bennur of 'Deccan Herald' that his resolve to press on with the eye and body donation campaign was strengthened when he was prevented from entering the house of a very conservative family (we still confront such attitude in Mysore ?) to promote eye donation among its members. Mr Rao can be contacted at 0821 - 2543674