The Conscious Donation Programme has been operating at the Medical University of Wrocław (UMW) since 2006, with 350 people choosing to donate their bodies posthumously to science. In 2022, there were 80 applicants to the programme, reports the university.

‘I think that a great influence on the growth of interest in donations is the taming of this difficult subject, among other things, through the actions of our university, organised around All Souls’ Day’, says Dr Zygmunt Domagała, from the UMW Department of Corporal Anatomy, the initiator of the programme. 

Every year at the UMW Anatomicum Collegium, students and staff light candles and lay bouquets to honour the donors. This symbolic acknowledgement of an important gift for the educational process of medical students has already become a university tradition. 

‘We also try to convey as much information as possible about the use of the human body for scientific purposes on this occasion and, above all, we talk about the respect with which the university’s employees treat the dead’, adds the scientist.

Read more: https://www.umw.edu.pl/pl/aktualnosci/przekazuja-ciala-nauce