The Delhi Traffic Police helped a 77-year-old man fulfil his wish of being a social activist in last minutes of his life by creating a green corridor recently and facilitating organ donation from the clinically dead patient.
In 21 minutes, the ambulance transported the patient who was assessed to be brain dead at Orchid Hospital in Janakpuri to Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre in AIIMS.
The total distance spans over 25 km. The elderly man was on ventilator for four days. When the family members of the man were counselled into donating the organs, NGO Dadhichi Deh Daan Samithi, which helps facilitate organ donation, contacted AIIMS.
The Traffic Police was contacted for creating a Green Corridor. For the first time in AIIMS, organs were retrieved from a person as old as 77-year-old.
While the kidneys of the man were donated to a two men between 48-50 years, the liver was donated to a 30-year-old patient in the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences.
“We did not have a patient with us who needed a liver transplant. The kidney transplants were carried out in AIIMS, one for a 48-year old male and the other for a 50-year-old male,” said Rajeev Maikhuri, the Organ Transplant Coordinator, ORBO, AIIMS.
The cornea, bones and tissues of the man who retired as a government teacher and was a social activist have been preserved.
The elderly man had registered himself as an eye donor in his early life. The heart of the patient could not be harvested as the patient had a bypass surgery a few years back.
“All due protocols were followed and the family members gave consent for retrieval of all the useful organs. The heart and the heart valves could not be used because the patient had a bypass surgery,” said M C Mishra, Director, AIIMS.
Declared dead
After being brought to AIIMS on Tuesday night, the patient was declared brought dead twice as per the rules, once at 1 am and the next at 7 am on Wednesday.Following this, the organ retrieval process started.
“If there was delay while transporting the patient, the organs may not have been useful for carrying out transplants in other patients,” said Dr Mishra.
This is the sixth case in which the AIIMS facilitated organ donation in the past two months, said the transplant co-ordinator. But this is the first case in which the Green Corridor was used.
“We did not need to halt the traffic in this case. But the ambulance moved without any hindrance and without having to stop at any red signal,” said Muktesh Chander, Special Commissioner, Traffic Police.
The ambulance took the route of Pankha Road passing through Delhi Cantonment Station Road, Dhaula Kuan and Ring Road before arriving at the AIIMS Trauma Centre.
