Indore/Delhi/Gurgaon: It was a blessing for four critically-ill patients getting their damaged organs transplanted across three cities as the city of Indore city offered life to them by preparing a Green Corridor for sending life organs. The past seven months have seen at least 25 organs being transported outside the city, all donated by families of patients declared brain dead, local authorities said.
On Thursday, by late afternoon, all four organs — a heart, liver and two kidneys — had been successfully transplanted from different cities with the help of paramedics and the coordination of various agencies in the three cities of Indore, Delhi and Gurgaon.
The Samaritan in this case happens to be 18-year-old newspaper vendor Deepak Dhaketa. Deepak was declared brain dead by doctors at the city's Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS) on Wednesday evening. His live organs, nevertheless, made their way to the three cities and gave a new lease of life to the four individuals, a report in the Times of India said today.
Donating Deepak’s organs was not an easy decision to make for his family. According to the report, it took three counselling sessions for the Dhaketa family to convince them to donating his organs.
While Deepak’s heart was transplanted to a 48-year-old woman suffering from an end-stage heart disease at Medanta Medicity in Gurgaon, his liver was taken to Delhi for a 55-year-old man suffering from liver failure at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in Vasant Kunj. The recipients of his organs are all stable post-transplant.
His kidneys were both transplanted at SAIMS and Choithram Hospital and Research Centre, both in Indore into two patients.
“Transporting the organs to various hospitals was a big challenge," Dr Sanjay Dixit, secretary of the Indore Organ Donation Society, who convinced the parents of youth to donate organ said.
"Three green corridors were created within Indore city to transport the organs to CHRC and the airport. The first two were created at 11.23am and 12.02pm to transport Deepak's liver and heart from to the airport — a distance of 11km that was covered in nine minutes. The third corridor was created simultaneously from SAIMS to Choithram Hospital, Indore, via a BRTS corridor for transporting a kidney," he said.
Traffic police in Delhi said that they received information about the green corridors around 11am, following which police teams from the Vasant Vihar traffic circle were put on alert for the ambulances carrying the organs, said Sharad Aggarwal, joint commissioner, traffic.
"The heart reached IGI airport around 1.15pm and was transported to Medanta Medicity in Gurgaon, covering about 18km within 16 minutes. The liver arrived at 1.58pm and it was transferred to ILBS, 11.4km away, in 15 minutes," he said.
The entire journey was videographed by the traffic personnel to identify vehicles obstructing the ambulance. Traffic lights on the ambulance route, from the airport to Gurgaon and Vasant Kunj, were also turned green."We would issue challans to the drivers obstructing the emergency vehicle," Aggarwal added.
Even the entry and exit channels NH8 were shut down to assist the movement of ambulance, said Anil Kumar, traffic inspector on the Delhi-Gurgaon highway.
A senior doctor at Medanta said the procedure want off smoothly. "The heart transplant has been completed but success will be known after some time," he added.
At ILBS, doctors said the recipient got lucky with the timely transplant. "He was very critical. We had scheduled him for the life-saving procedure last month too but some complications arose," told a doctor.
