Waiting game for patients who need transplant

Ganesh Kumar’s search for the ‘right treatment’ ended in Delhi after travelling across four cities two years back. The 30-year-old man who hails from Palamu district in Jharkhand did not know what was suddenly wrong when he started getting bouts of vomiting. His first stop was a private hospital in Ranchi. He next went to Vellore, Tamil Nadu.

“First the doctors suggested dialysis. But later they made it clear that I have to undergo a kidney transplant. The procedures would cost in lakhs which I could not afford,” says Ganesh. “Someone told me that there is an Ayurvedic doctor in Mumbai. There too I went in vain,” he adds.

He finally came to government-run Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi where he underwent a kidney transplant in September last year. “My 22-year-old sister donated me her kidney. It was a difficult decision for the family as the doctors said I would not survive without a transplant.”

A patient typically shells out between Rs 12,000-Rs 28,000 every month for dialysis at a private hospital and between Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 at a government hospital. Below Poverty Line (BPL) card-holders are charged around Rs 250 for one dialysis session.

RML Hospital can only accommodate 20 patients at a time for transplant surgeries. The rest are sent away. The situation is typical of any government hospital in the capital, with acute shortage in ICU beds.

RML Hospital sees around 1,000 patients on an average for transplants every month. However, it conducts only four transplants a month.

“There is a huge gap between the number of such patients we get and the number we can attend to. We cannot accommodate more than 20 at a given point of time. We ask them to go to other hospitals. A lot of patients die as they are not able to get transplant at the right time,” says Dr Himanshu Sekhar Mahapatra, head of nephrology department.

Efforts to tie up with private hospitals for patients belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS) do not always work. “Patients are turned away with hospitals claiming there are no vacancies under the EWS category,” says Dr Mahapatra.

Though Ganesh feels “much healthier” now, the struggle isn’t over yet for him yet. On Thursday, he was waiting for his doctor at the RML hospital for a regular check-up. “I have to come here once in 20 days or every month. We have already exhausted all our savings and it gets difficult spending on railway tickets every month but there is no other option,” he says.

This is a common story of patients from outside Delhi. Many uproot their lives and settle in Delhi till the treatment is complete. Ganesh’s mother and sisters have shifted here for a year. “Only my father stayed back in Jharkhand to work or how else would we get the money,” says Ganesh.

Similarly Rajendra Kumar Upadhyay, a resident of Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh is currently living in a rented house in sector 16, Dwarka  for the last two months as his 22-year-old son Ashish is due to undergo kidney transplant at Fortis Hospital in two weeks. “We are just hoping that he gets well after the transplant. That’s all we want,” says Rajendra, who is the donor.

Thirty-two-year-old Javir Ali, who got his transplant done in October 2013, says his life never returned to normal after it. Ali was working as a carpenter before his kidney ailment, but could not continue after the transplant.

His income is now dependent on someone doing the work for him. “Since people know me in the area, they call me for any carpentry work. I outsource it and share the income with them,” says Ali, a resident of Shahdara.

It has been three years since his transplant but he still has to go for a check-up every month. With a debt of Rs 3 lakh and a family of five to support, Ali says he hopes someday he can go back to work.  “The whole process cost me Rs 7 lakh, out of which I took Rs lakh from people I know. I don’t know how to repay that. I just wish that someday I will feel healthy, the hospital visits will stop and I can start working again,” he says.