HYDERABAD: A 29-year-old man from Nalgonda district underwent a heart transplantation surgery free of cost under the Aarogyasri Health Scheme. If the same surgery was performed by a private hospital, he would have been charged anywhere between Rs 15 to 25 lakh.
Linga Swamy, a school bus driver, has been living with Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCMP) — a condition that reduces the ability of the heart to pump blood to all the organs in the body — for the past five years and was susceptible to a multi-organ failure. He was in urgent need of a better performing heart.
In search of a healthy heart, Linga Swamy registered with the government’s Jeevandhan-Organ Donation Programme. He subsequently found a suitable donor and underwent the transplantation at Century Hospitals in the month of November.
The surgery went on for three hours and 20 minutes. It has been about 15 days since the surgery and Swamy looks well and able.
Meanwhile, officials from the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust said that a heart transplantation such as this was a rarity under the scheme. Most of the usual organ transplantation surgeries undertaken by Aarogyasri were that of kidneys and livers.