A one-year-old from Gujarat, critically ill due to a rare congenital condition, successfully underwent a liver transplant at Apollo Hospitals, Navi Mumbai, in February. According to doctors, Ram Mistry, weighing 6.5 kg, is the smallest baby to undergo a liver transplant in Maharashtra.
Ram was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease due to a rare congenital condition called biliary atresia, which progressed to advanced liver cirrhosis within months of his birth. Ram’s mother, Ishani Mistry, said, “Initially, no doctors in Vadodara could diagnose my baby’s disease. A paediatrician was finally able to diagnose Ram when he was two months old, after which he underwent a Kasai procedure.”
Road to Apollo
But when the problem continued, relatives and family members started giving advice: “Doctors say anything, don’t do such a thing”, “Consider it as fate and try for another baby.” Going against these opinions, the Mistry family decided to pursue a liver transplant.
The next step was to find a donor. “My baby needs me every minute, so I couldn’t donate. So my sister, Divya, decided to be the donor for my child,” Ms. Mistry said. She said finding a medical team familiar with transplants for babies and managing the treatment cost were their biggest concerns.
Divya researched online and learned about the NGO called ‘Transplants – Help the Poor Foundation’. “This foundation led us to Apollo. We started visiting doctors at Apollo from July 2017, and the surgery took place in February this year,” Divya said.
Assistance from the NGO, Tata Foundation Trust and Apollo Hospitals, funding arranged by the family and crowd-funding through Ketto.com contributed to the bulk of the transplant costs.
Dr. Darius F. Mirza, head, liver transplant, Apollo Hospitals, said, “Biliary atresia is a rare disease in newborns where the liver’s bile ducts are absent. It requires early surgical correction, which only works in 40% of cases. In this case, the transplant was needed very early in life. Thanks to the initiative shown by the family and the cooperation between NGOs and funding partners, we were able to successfully perform this life-saving surgery. We are happy that baby Ram and his aunt are recovering well. Our goal is to provide life-saving liver transplantation to all such children, regardless of their family’s ability to afford this treatment.”
Awareness needed
Dr. Narendra Trivedi, CEO, Apollo Hospitals, Navi Mumbai, said the hospital has performed six liver transplants in children in eight months, since the inception of the transplant programme in 2017, and is the first hospital in the city to offer this service for very small children.
Dr. Vijay Yewale, head of the hospital’s paediatrics department, said, “We are sure there are more children in need of transplants, but lack of awareness is what stops them from taking the step. We want people to know that liver disorders in small children are curable.”
One of the beneficiaries of the transplant programme is Kamothe resident Bhavana Sardesai, who donated a part of her liver to her eight-year-old son, Mayuresh, last year. Ms. Sardesai lost three children to liver ailments in a span of 10 years prior to that. She said, “I lost three children within seven days of their birth. By the time we had our fourth child, we were aware of the problem, but he had a very restricted life. As he could not digest proteins, we had to be careful with his diet. But after the transplant, he can eat whatever he wants.”
