The family of a 50-year-old woman, who suffered a serious head injury in a train accident and was declared brain dead in a hospital in Thane, donated her heart, liver, kidneys and corneas on Wednesday. The heart’s recipient was a 48-year-old woman who was suffering from cardio myopathy, while the liver’s recipient was a 65-year-old, who had been on the waiting list for the last 10 months.
The woman, a Nalasopara resident, was a housewife. She was getting off the local train at Nalasopara on February 6 when she fell down and suffered a head injury. She was taken to Alliance hospital, also in Nalasopara, for treatment. She was declared clinically brain dead on February 8, and her family expressed the desire to donate her organs. Since the hospital was not registered on the organ transplant network, the family, showing exceptional drive, contacted the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee themselves. The ZTCC officials, in turn, contacted Jupiter Hospital to move her to their facility. She was moved to Jupiter on the intervening night of February 8 and 9.
Early Wednesday morning, her heart was rushed to Fortis Hospital in Mulund and the transplant procedure completed in the early hours of Wednesday. The liver transplant procedure on the 65-year-old too started at 6 am at Jupiter hospital and was completed after nine hours. “The patient was extremely unwell and needed a liver desperately. He was called twice, when there was a possibility of a donor, but he had to go back both times as the donation didn’t materialise. This was the third time he was called, and this time, he got the liver,” said Ankur Shah, liver transplant surgeon at Jupiter Hospital.
This was the sixth cadaver donation recorded in Mumbai this year. The 48-year-old woman, who underwent the heart transplant procedure, is stable and currently in the ICU, said Anvay Mule, head of the cardiac transplant team at Fortis, Mulund.
The recipients of the two kidneys were also women aged 24 and 30 respectively.
