A senior citizen from Chennai gave a second lease of life to a liver failure patient here on Sunday, making it Maharashtra's first case of liver-sharing with another state. Doctors from the two metros, bound in a race against time, meticulously retrieved and harvested the organ in 10 hours.
MOHAN, the acronym, stands for Multi-Organ Harvesting Aid Network. In Hyderabad, a couple, 48-year-old Lalitha Raghuram and 52-year-old Raghuram, who are actively involved in the network, live by what they preach.
Venya Raman had been ill since birth. Right after birth, she developed medical complications in the brain (inflammation and abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the cavities) and was in and out of hospitals all the time.
The number of people who volunteered to donate organs was very low, said J. Amalorpavanathan, State Co-ordinator, Cadaver Transplant Programme, at the ‘Organ Donation Awareness and Promotion’ programme for nursing college students, the police and public, held here on Saturday.
Lalita, a widow with three young children, felt the world closing in on her when doctors told her she immediately needed a kidney transplant. Fortunately, she found a donor, and 10 years later is leading a healthy and happy life with her now grown-up children. Not everyone is as lucky as her because organ donation is still a taboo and an estimated 500,000 people die each year in India because of non-availability of organs.
A measure of how popular organ donation has become in the State and city is how it has entered the technology zone – personal technology, mobile phones and social media.
The government has notified the Transplantation of Human Organs (Amendment) Act, 2011 that allows swapping of organs and widens the donor pool by including grandparents and grandchildren in the list.
Mrithansanjeevani, the deceased organ transplantation programme started by the state health department, has so far saved 97 lives through 100 organ transplants at various hospitals in the state.
Working in a field that is constantly rocked by scandals is fraught with the risk of people eyeing it with scepticism. Yet for Lalitha Raghuram, country director, MOHAN (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network) Foundation, working for the cause of organ donation is a passion; you can hear it in her voice when she speaks about it.
A family willingly donates the organs of a loved one, who is brain dead due to injuries sustained in a road accident, to give a new lease of life to many others waiting for vital organs.
