Her life was short and sweet and she was gone even before Ajith or Divya could say goodbye to the apple of their eye.
Losing one’s three-year-old is not something most parents ever recover from. But even in that heart-wrenching moment, when they were told that their daughter would never come back to life, Ajith, an employee of the VSSC and his wife, had no second thoughts about donating their child’s organs.
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When three-year-old Anjana was declared brain-dead at the paediatric ICU of Sree Avittam Thirunal Hospital on Saturday and her parents let know their willingness for organ donation, they did not immediately know that they would be saving another young life. Or that Anjana would be the youngest organ donor in Kerala till date.
Anjana’s organs — liver as well as both her kidneys — went to save the life of a five-year-old, Anil Raj, who has been ailing with both kidney and liver failure at KIMS Hospital here and who needed an immediate transplant. Both corneas were also retrieved by the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology.
This is the first time that Kerala Network for Organ Sharing, the nodal agency in charge of the State’s deceased donor organ donation Programme, Mrithasanjeevani, was dealing with an organ donation, wherein both the donor and the recipient were so young.
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Also, this was the first time that three organs from a single donor was being transplanted in a single recipient.
Anjana was the younger of Ajith and Divya’s two children. She was rushed to SAT Hospital on Thursday, after she suddenly fell unconscious while playing.
A brain scan revealed that she was suffering from advanced Medulloblastoma, a common malignant brain tumour in children. Doctors said there was very little they could do to save her. Her parents were told about her condition on Friday itself and KNOS was informed when the parents wondered if they could donate her organs.
“A child’s organs are best suited for another child. We decided to donate all three organs to one child because it would have been difficult for him (Anil Raj) to survive with organs from different people,” Aneesh, transplant coordinator, KNOS, said.
Hospital sources said Anil Raj was waiting to receive liver and a kidney from his father, when the route of cadaver donation suddenly fell open.
A team from KIMS hospital and a surgical team from SAT Hospital completed the organ retrieval by 8.45 a.m. Anjana’s body was handed over to her parents and the funeral was held in the afternoon.