Air ambulance ferries organs harvested from brain dead

In the second instance of use of air ambulance in the state to ferry harvested organs, a chartered aircraft was today used to transport the heart and lungs of a 19-year-old brain dead patient from here to a hospital in Chennai.

A green corridor was created along the more than 30-km stretch of the road from Lakeshore Hospital here to the international airport at nearby Nedumbassery for uninterrupted passage of the ambulance carrying the organs and it covered the distance in just 25 minutes.

The organs were then taken onboard a chartered aircraft of a private airline, which has been converted into an air ambulance, hospital authorities said.

The organs, harvested in a four-hour long surgery at the Lakeshore Hospital, would be transplanted in patients at the Fortis Malar Hospital in Chennai, they said.

H Pranav, injured in a bike accident on Sunday in Alappuzha District, was declared brain dead at Lakeshore Hospital, where he was admitted after initial treatment at a government hospital, and his family gave consent for donating his organs.

It was only last month that an air ambulance -- a Naval aircraft -- was used for the first time in Kerala to transport a heart harvested from a brain dead patient in Thiruvananthapuram for a recipient in Kochi.

Cadaver donation is steadily catching up in Kerala with vital organs of 138 brain dead persons having been harvested and transplanted in needy patients in the last four years.

This year, the number of donors has already crossed the 36 mark as of now and it is expected to go up to around 70 in the coming months.