Breaking the age-old custom that discourages Narikuravas, an indigenous tribe, from donating human organs, a family of Devarayaneri in Tiruchi district donated the vital organs of a brain-dead youth on Saturday.
A team of doctors at Cethar Hospital here harvested the organs. The heart was airlifted from Tiruchi to Hyderabad by a chartered plane with the police creating a green corridor in the city for its speedy transport to the airport.
When R. Saravanan (23) met with a road accident at Thuvakudi on Tiruchi-Thanjavur highway on November 23, his family and friends hoped he would recover. However, a CT scan revealed brain injury, and he was declared brain-dead.
When his father Ravi and his daughters were told about organ donation, some Narikurava community members maintained that their tradition discouraged organ donation. However, Ravi thought otherwise and took a decision to donate Saravanan’s organs to give a new lease of life to six needy patients.
On getting Ravi’s approval, vital organs such as heart, liver, kidneys and eyes were harvested by a transplant and retrieval team. The heart was sent to Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad, for a patient waiting at the hospital for a transplant.
The heart was transported in 9 minutes. The Tiruchi City Traffic Police escorted the ambulance carrying the heart. Traffic was stopped briefly at important junctions to ensure that it reached the airport and flown to Hyderabad as quickly as possible.
While the retrieved liver was used for a patient with end-stage liver disease at Cethar hospital, the kidneys were sent to Frontline Hospital, and ABC Hospital in Tiruchi. Both the eyes were sent to AG Eye Hospital in Tiruchi.
This is the first time a vital organ has been airlifted from Tiruchi to Hyderabad through State-to-State organ sharing.
“There is a belief that we, Narikuravas, should not donate organs. But I thought that there is nothing wrong in donating the organs to other patients to give them a new lease of life. I feel happy to visualise my son through them,” Mr.Ravi told The Hindu .
