CHANDIGARH: A donor heart was retrieved at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Haryana's Rohtak at 7.20 pm, and the team carrying the organ left the facility at 7.40 pm, reaching Fortis Hospital in Delhi's Shalimar Bagh at 8.43 pm on Thursday.
The organ was transported from Rohtak in Haryana to Delhi over 95 km in a span of 63 minutes through the 'Green Corridor '.
The corridor was coordinated by both the Haryana Police and Delhi Police to facilitate the uninterrupted movement of the ambulance carrying the organ across the two states, with the police forces coordinating to help the ambulance move without traffic delays.
The hospital was alerted through the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) network at 8.50 am about a heart available for a B-positive recipient.
Doctors at Fortis confirmed a suitable recipient at 9.55 am, while formal allocation was completed by NOTTO at 12.03 pm. The transplant team then travelled from Delhi to Rohtak, leaving at 2.49 pm and reaching PGIMS at 4.34 pm.
Fortis Hospital's vice-president and facility director Naveen Sharma described the operation as requiring close synchronisation between law-enforcement authorities and medical teams.
"Executing an inter-state green corridor across a 95-km route requires extraordinary synchronisation between law enforcement authorities and medical teams,’’ he said.
The organ-transport organisation NOTTO (the national apex organisation responsible for the National Organ Transplant Programme) maintains the national donor-recipient registry.
Its SOP provides for green corridors to reduce delays during organ movement and calls for coordination between the allocation authorities and police.
It also envisages nodal police officers to deal with jurisdictional and security issues during such transfers.
The transplant manual notes that organs may have to travel between states when a suitable recipient is not available locally, making rapid road or air transport an integral part of the transplantation system.
The remarkable Thursday involved a coordinated chain involving the donor hospital, transplant team, recipient hospital, NOTTO and police departments on both sides of the State border.
