KOCHI:Though records cannot erase the grief of his parents, H Pranav is part of a new chapter in the state’s organ transplant history, as the organs of the 19-year-old were transported to Tamil Nadu. In a first, the organs of a brain-dead man from Kerala were flown to another state for transplant, on Tuesday.
Within minutes after the four-hour-long surgery which started at 8 am was completed at Lakeshore Hospital, Maradu, near here, Pranav’s heart and lungs were taken to the Nedumbassery airport to be airlifted to Chennai, in a chartered flight of Jet Airways which was used as the air ambulance.
The journey of the ambulance carrying the heart and lungs was through the Vyttila and Edappally Bypass Junctions during the peak hours. The distance of 34.4 kilometres from Lakeshore Hospital in Maradu to Cochin International Airport, Nedumbassery, which normally takes not less than one hour to cover, took only 31 minutes on Tuesday.
Traffic restrictions were imposed along the National Highway from Nettoor to Nedumbassery and other vehicles were not allowed when the ambulance was on the move. The ambulance, escorted by a police vehicle, rushed through a ‘green corridor’ created by the police, where all signals were green to reach the airport. In around an hour, the flight reached Chennai.
“We ensured all the security clearances for the medical team with the donated organs to board the chartered flight,” Cochin International Airport director A C K Nair told the media.
A medical team from Fortis Malar Hospital in Chennai assisted the Lakeshore Hospital team in the surgery and in transporting the organs of this native of Muthukulam, near Kayamkulam, who was declared brain dead on Monday night, to Tamil Nadu. According to a spokesperson of Lakeshore Hospital, the relatives of Pranav, on Monday night itself, had agreed to donate the organs and that it would benefit five others. “The heart and lung have been given to a patient in Chennai. The liver is being transplanted to a 39-year-old patient under treatment here. One kidney is also being given to a patient here while the other kidney is being given to a patient in Kozhikode. The small intestine is given to a patient in another hospital in the city,” said the spokesperson. It was around 4 pm on Sunday that Pranav, a second year BCom student and son of Harilal and Bindu, was critically injured in an accident that saw collision of two bikes at Muthukulam. Last month, Kochi had witnessed a transfer of a heart from a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram in almost similar conditions.
34.4 KM in 31 MINUTES
District Collector M G Rajamanickam and City Police Commissioner K G James monitor the entire operation from the control room
The ambulance leaves the hospital at 11.56 am and reaches the airport at 12.27 pm
A convoy of ambulances covers the distance from Maradu to Nedumbassery Airport, having 11 traffic signals, in 31 minutes
Normal time:
At least 75 minutes
The City Police team escorting the ambulance in four jeeps travels non-stop till Muttom in Kalamassery, from where the Rural Police takes over