Organs of brain dead youth help save eight lives

The victim M Dhanapal, of Karanampettai in Coimbatore District, was a van driver for a private school. Dhanapal was the eldest of the two sons of Murugesan and Meenakshi, who are weavers working for daily wages. Late in the evening on November 19 he was riding a two-wheeler on the Karanampettai to Somanur Road when his vehicle met with an accident with a lorry. With a head injury, he was rushed to the Muthu’s Hospital at Singanallur in the city. The organ donation coordinator of the hospital P. Prabakaran said he had suffered multiple fractures on the head. He was unconscious since then and was brain dead around 5.30 pm. on November 27. The same night he was declared brain dead. “On learning about his condition his parents volunteered to donate his organs. This came as a surprise for us as it was the first organ donation for our hospital,” Prabakaran said. Approval to retrieve his organs was obtained early the next morning. 

A team of 16 doctors (including four from Chennai) led by chief doctor of the private Hospital M. Muthu Saravana Kumar began retrieving his vital organs at 5.30 p.m. on Monday. By 9.15 that night his heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, eyes and skin were retrieved. “Green corridors were prepared by the city traffic police for speedy transportation of the organs. The ambulance carrying the heart and lungs reached Coimbatore International Airport, covering a distance of little more than eight kilometres, in just six minutes,” Deputy Commissioner of the city police (Traffic) S. Saravanan said. The organs were flown to Fortis Malar Hospital, Chennai, where the heart was transplanted on an eight-year-old boy. The lungs were transplanted to another patient in the same hospital. At the same time four ambulances left the hospital and handed over the liver to Gem Hospital, kidneys to KG Hospital, eyes to Aravind Eye Hospital and Skin to the skin bank of Ganga Hospital in Coimbatore.