When a 23-year-old farmer's heart from Maharashtra saved a man's life in Delhi

Pune in Maharashtra became part of an inter-state heart transplant procedure for the first time when the family of a 23-year-old brain-dead farmer from Khed donated the vital organ to a 24-year-old patient in Delhi. Other vital organs of the farmer, including his liver, two kidneys and two corneas, benefited six patients enrolled with different hospitals in Pune.

The heart transplant surgery , which began at 6.30pm on 27April, at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, was expected to take around 12 hours to complete, doctors said. The heart was retrieved at 1pm. The window period for the retrieval of a heart and the start of the transplant is around 4-6 hours.

Doctors, police and airport officials in Pune and Delhi created a green corridor in both places to give a clear passage to the live heart. The heart was taken from Ruby Hall Clinic to the Lohegaon airport, Pune, in just six-and-a-half minutes. In regular traffic, it takes around 29 minutes to cover the 7.8km distance.

In August last year, Pune witnessed its first intercity heart transplant when a brain-dead woman’s heart was donated to a Mumbai man. It was for the first time in the city that multiple vital organs were harvested from a cadaver donor, said chief cardiologist Parvez Grant, managing trustee of Ruby Hall Clinic. “The donation led to the first inter-state heart transplant involving the city and helped others suffering from end-stage kidney and liver diseases and blindness,” the cardiologist said, as reported by India Times.

Think Change India salutes the family from Khed in Maharashtra.

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