Kerala boy's organs flown to Chennai for transplant

Heart and lungs harvested from a 19-year-old, who was declared brain-dead in Kochi, were on Tuesday flown to Chennai, marking the first inter-state organ transplantation from Kerala. The recipient of the organs is a man undergoing treatment for heart and lung-related ailments, in Fortis Malar Hospital in Chennai.

H Pranav, a native of Kayamkulam in Alappuzha district, was brought to Lakeshore Hospital in Kochi on Monday after a motorbike accident. After securing consent for the organ donation from his parents, the government-run Kerala Network of Organ Sharing (KNOS) coordinated efforts to find a recipient.

Dr Noble Gracious, nodal officer of KNOS, said doctors from Fortis flew down to Kochi in a passenger aircraft on Tuesday morning and supervised the harvesting surgery. The team of doctors returned with the harvested organs in an aircraft owned by the hospital group.

“The Tamil Nadu Network of Organ Sharing was contacted because there were no takers registered in Kerala as prospective beneficiaries for heart and lungs,” Dr Gracious told Deccan Herald.

Harvesting of the organs commenced at about 9 am. After the surgery that lasted about three hours, the organs were transported to the Cochin International Airport; the 34-km stretch was covered in under 30 minutes, thanks to traffic regulations implemented all through the stretch.

The aircraft took off with the harvested organs at about 12.30 pm. Pranav’s vital organs are set to revive lives of four more people in Kerala, with his parents deciding to donate his intestine, liver and kidneys to patients admitted in different hospitals in the state.

The first inter-state organ transplantation involving Kerala is set to mark a new chapter in the state’s history of organ donation. On July 24, the heart of lawyer S Neelakanta Sharma — declared brain-dead in Thiruvananthapuram — was transplanted into Mathew Achadan, an auto-rickshaw driver, in a surgery held in Kochi.

The harvested organ was carried by air — in the first such mission carried out in the state — from Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi in a Dornier aircraft of the Indian Navy.