An 18-year-old newspaper vendor in Indore, Deepak Dhaketa, died of a road accident on Wednesday. He was declared brought brain dead by doctors at Indore’s Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS) on Wednesday evening.
The doctors knew that Deepak’s untimely death had left his family shattered, but they also knew that his organs could still save four critically-ill patients.
They had mounting challenges ahead: they had to first convince the victim’s family for donating Deepak’s organs, and then to race against time to transport them to the needed as soon as possible. That too in Delhi and Gurgaon – some 700 kilometres away.
But it happened! The aggrieved family agreed after three counselling sessions to have Deepak’s four organs — a heart, liver and two kidneys – harvested, as per a report in The Times of India.
By Thursday noon, four organ transplants had been carried out
His two kidneys were transplanted into two patients within the same city – at Indore’s SAIMS and Choithram Hospital and Research Centre. Deepak’s heart and liver, on the other hand, were flown to Delhi.
Deepak’s heart saved the life of a 48-year-old woman at Medanta Medicity in Gurgaon who was suffering from end-stage heart disease. The liver recipient was a 55-year-old man suffering from liver failure at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj. All patients are stable after transplant.
Transporting the organs was the biggest challenge
Dr Sanjay Dixit, the secretary of Indore Organ Donation Society who facilitated the donation, told TOI that three green corridors were created on Thursday morning within Indore to take the organs to the airport – which helped to cover 11 km in nine minutes. The Delhi police were informed of the need for green corridors by 11 am on Thursday.
“The heart reached IGI airport around 1.15pm and was transported to Medanta Medicity in Gurgaon, covering about 18km within 16 minutes. The liver arrived at 1.58pm and it was transferred to ILBS, 11.4km away, in 15 minutes,” Sharad Aggarwal, joint commissioner, Delhi traffic, told TOI.