Three patients awaiting organs in city hospitals were given a fresh lease of life when the family of a veterinarian donated his organs after he was declared brain dead by doctors on Sunday. The gesture by the family of Dr Chandrakant Nerkar, 37, makes this the third cadaver donation this year.
Nerkar, a Neral resident, was admitted with serious head injuries around 12.30 am on January 22 to MGM Hospital in Vashi after suffering a stroke while riding his bike. His condition did not improve, and he was declared brain dead on January 23, following which the hospital staff counselled the family to donate his organs.
MGM Hospital administrator PK Sashanker said the family agreed to donate his kidneys and liver, and after completing all formalities, the hospital informed the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee. Patients were picked based on the waiting list, one of whom was Chandra Kiran Sahu, 60, from Kopar Khairane who was on dialysis for the last five years. Doctors said she responded well to the transplant and is stable.
The organ retrieval exercise started around 2.30 am on Sunday and was completed by 7.30 am. The liver was transplanted to a 64-year-old man at Jupiter Hospital. Sahu underwent the kidney transplant at MGM Hospital, while the second kidney was donated to a 45-year-old woman at Fortis Hospital, Mulund.
Officials at the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee said patients who received the organs had been on the waiting list for quite some time. “The patient at Fortis was on the list for nearly three years,” a ZTCC official said.
While the awareness to donate organs is gradually increasing, the waiting list is still long and the waiting period stretches into years. While 150 people are waiting for livers, as many as 3,000 patients are on the waiting list for kidneys. “Once a patient is on dialysis, he can register with the ZTCC for a kidney,” an official said.
On Sunday, after the organs were retrieved, Nerker’s body was handed to his family and the hospital arranged an ambulance to take it to their native place in Dhule for the last rites. Incidentally on Sunday, Hinduja Hospital felicitated families of organ donors who took the call to donate the organ of a loved one. The speakers highlighted cases such as those of a mother-in-law donating a kidney to her daughter-in-law and, in one case, even to a daughter-in-law’s mother.
January has seen much activity in organ donations, including inter-state heart transplants. Doctors at the helm of organs transplants said though it appears that transplants have picked up, much awareness is still needed.
The article has been corrected for a factual error.
