40-day-old baby turns life-saver in death

In a fillip to the efforts of organisations like Mohan (Multi-organ harvesting aid network) Foundation that encourage ca­daver transplantation in infants, parents of the yet-to-be-named 40-day child donated the valves to a baby boy and a  baby girl suffering from congenital heart disease.

The infant donor was born to Vijay Kumar, a rubber factory worker here, and Maheswari. Their child was hale and hearty for a while but suddenly fell ill and was taken to the Lotus children hospital in Lakdikapul. The baby was declared brain dead on May 8.  Counselled by the volunteers of the Mohan Foundation, the parents agreed to donate his organs.

Vijay Kumar said “maybe god gave my son a short life and sent him for giving life to others. Raghuram of the Mohan Foundation told me how my son can still live through others. So I agreed to donate his organs.”

Timely aid

The heart valves of the infant donor were successfully transplanted to four-month-old V Devipriya from Kurnool and Shehil Tondare from Chandrapur in Maharashtra.
Both children would have died within a few months if suitable valves had  not been made available through cadaver donation.

Dr K S Murthy, chief pediatric cardiac surgeon and CMD of Innova Hospital, who performed the surgery, said “the blue babies had a hole in the heart and the pulmonary valve wasn’t properly formed. The operations were successful. Both recipients had homograft valve transplantation from the donor and are the youngest recipients of homograft transplantation in the country.”

Devipriya’s father V Sridhar said he had “almost given up hope. I kept running from one hospital to another but heard that chances of getting a donor were slim. God came to my rescue in the form of the donor baby boy.”