For 51-year-old Maya Shah, a resident of Mumbai who was suffering from Chronic Liver Disease, new life came in the form of a liver from a donor at Jipmer, Puducherry, thanks to the green corridor.
The Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu police created a green corridor throughout 378 km highway transporting the organ through a traffic-free route from Jipmer till it reached Apollo Speciality Hospital here in record time, where the patient was admitted. While the organ was brought in a car from Jipmer to SRM Medical University, 15 km away from Tiruchi, it was then transferred to an Apollo Hospital ambulance and was brought to Madurai from there.
An alert from the Tamil Nadu Government Cadaver Transplant Programme was sounded to the Apollo Hospital on Monday and a team from the hospital reached there close to midnight and checked whether the liver could be harvested from a young female donor there, who was declared brain dead.
“The harvested organ left Jipmer at 6 a.m. on Tuesday and was brought to the hospital here at 9.46 a.m. covering 378 km in less than four hours. Vehicles were stopped at the Chitampatti tollgate and once the ambulance reached Othakadai, it crossed 14 intersections where traffic was stopped inside the city and reached the hospital in less than 4 minutes,” said G. Mariappan, Inspector of Police who travelled in a police jeep with the ambulance.
From Jipmer, Puducherry, the ambulance crossed Villupuram and Tiruchi districts before entering Madurai and the police at each district coordinated and stopped traffic at intersections. Loudspeakers and sirens were used to inform vehicles on the highways to stay on side and stop to give way for the ambulance, which was tailed by a police jeep.
Dr. Ilankumaran, a liver transplant surgeon from Apollo who went to Jipmer to receive the organ and bring it to Madurai said that the timely intervention of the district police helped them make the journey back soon. “There was a massive accident near Kottampatti and traffic was held up all along the highway since villagers had blocked traffic. The police, however, immediately ensured that the ambulance was given way. They cleared the way in 10 minutes,” he said.
For ambulance driver A. Rajkumar, who brought the organ from Tiruchi to Madurai, this was his first experience in helping an organ transplant take place across districts in his two years of service. “I took over at 8.35 a.m. near Tiruchi and drove from there. There were no traffic hold ups other than in Kottampatti and we were able to reach in record time,” he said. “Once a liver is harvested, the earlier it is transplanted, the better. The Tamil Nadu Government is doing a lot to ensure that timely organ transplantations occur and the state has a record number of transplantations performed, thanks to awareness and families coming forward to donate,” said Anand K. Khakhar, Program Director, Centre for Liver Disease and transplantation. Salem Police Commissioner A. Amalraj said the police arranged to keep the toll gates open for the vehicle transporting the organ. On a request from hospital authorities, he said the DGP's office coordinated with the district police along the route of the ambulance and made sure that it moved without any interruption.
