The police and traffic authorities in Delhi created two green corridors on Friday that saved the lives of a 20-year-old man and a 13-year-old child.
Two hearts transported
In the first case, the heart of a 45-year-old man was flown from Chandigarh to the Delhi airport, from where it was taken to AIIMS in just 27 minutes thanks to a 17.5-km-long green corridor created by the authorities. The heart was transplanted into a 20-year-old man suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy. “From T3 at IGI airport, we provided a green corridor of 17.5 km. The journey to AIIMS from the airport began at 8.50 a.m. and ended at 9.17 a.m.,” a senior official of the Delhi Traffic Police Department said.
“The 45-year-old man had sustained brain injury after suffering a fall. We were intimated by NOTTO (National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation) and a team of doctors went to Chandigarh by a flight last night. They harvested the heart from the brain dead patient this morning around 5 a.m. and came back to Delhi. It was then transplanted into a 20-year-old young man, who suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy,” said Dr. Balram Airan, Dean of AIIMS and chief of the Cardio-Thorasic Centre.
The 45-year-old man was declared dead at PGI, Chandigarh, and the family agreed to donate his heart, Dr Airan added.
Later in the day, an 18-km-long green corridor was provided from Terminal 1D to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in south Delhi’s Okhla. The heart of a 32-year-old woman was flown from Chandigarh to the Delhi airport, from where it was taken to the hospital in just 18 minutes.
The journey began at 1.05 p.m. and ended at 01.23 p.m., an official said.
“Doctors performed a heart transplant on a 13-year-old child from Agra who was suffering from heart failure due to viral myocarditis. The organs were donated by the family of the deceased, who was declared brain dead at PGI Hospital in Chandigarh after being on ventilator support for three weeks,” said a statement from the hospital.
The child recipient was suffering from a heart failure due to viral myocarditis and had an EF (ejection fraction) of barely 15-20 per cent (normal heart functions at 55-60%). After two prior admissions at FEHI in the past one year due to heart failure, this was the third time that the child had been admitted after his condition deteriorated.
