Jipmer celebrated the sixth anniversary of its Cadaver Donor Transplantation Programme by honouring families of its donors.
Rakesh Aggarwal, Director, Jipmer, along with the members of the deceased donor transplantation committee honoured donor families and police officers who coordinated with the Jipmer hospital in completing the necessary formalities for organ donation.
Medical experts, nurses and other support staff at Jipmer who actively participated in the programme and contributed extra working hours and effort outside their duty hours without expecting any extra remuneration were also felicitated.
Inaugurating the event, Dr. Aggarwal said Jipmer was the first institution to start organ harvesting from brain-dead donors in Puducherry in December 2013. Harvesting and transplanting of organs like kidney and liver, and tissues like hands, skin and corneas (eyes) were being offered at Jipmer.
Jipmer has till date performed a total of 650 corneal transplants (since 1997), 218 kidney transplants (since 2012), 5 liver transplants (since 2017), 1 skin transplant and 3 hand transplants (since 2017).
Hand transplant
In fact, Jipmer is the only government hospital in India to have performed a hand transplant operation, he said.
Jipmer has so far harvested organs like kidney, liver and heart from 42 brain-dead patients since the programme’s inception. A total of 218 patients have undergone kidney transplants at the institute till date, of which 82 kidneys were from deceased donors and 3 from PIMS as a part of organ sharing.
Since it started the liver transplant programme in 2017, Jipmer has performed five liver transplant operations, the Director said. Sreejith Parameswaran, Nodal officer, NOTTO, presented the annual report. Shankareswari, Deputy Nursing Superintendent, faculty members from various departments, staff and member of the public participated.
A public interactive session on brain death and organ donation was chaired by Mohan V.K., Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology & Critical Care. Patients who underwent deceased donor kidney transplants shared their experiences.
