One night in March this year, just two months after the celebration of their son’s first birthday, P. Santhalakshmi was waiting for her husband to return home from work.
“I kept trying to reach him on his mobile, and finally, a policeman picked up the phone and told me that my husband had been involved in an accident,” said the 29-year-old. The family rushed to Apollo Hospitals in Teynampet, where he was admitted, but later, doctors told them he was brain dead. “We were married for just three years,” said Santhalakshmi. She and her father-in-law decided to donate his organs.
At the other end is a story of happiness. R. Deivanayaki, who works in Kalpakkam as a scientific officer, was diagnosed with heart lung disease in 2004. “For 10 years, I managed with medication, but in 2014, when I fell very ill, doctors told me the only option was a transplant,” she said. Deivanayaki got a donor and heart and lungs, and underwent the procedure. Before the transplant, she said, she hadn’t been able to walk properly or even carry her then one-year-old daughter. “I bow my head before all the donor families,” she said emotionally, adding that they had given her a rebirth.
Santhalakshmi’s was one of many families of organ donors who were honoured at Apollo Speciality Hospitals, OMR on Friday on the occasion of National Organ Donation Day. Another woman spoke about initially refusing and then agreeing to donate her son’s organs.
“None of this could take place without the donor families,” said Prathap C. Reddy, chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group, calling Tamil Nadu the birthplace of transplants.
State Health Minister C. Vijaya Baskar said the government was committed to extending the transplantation programme to tier II cities such as Madurai and Coimbatore.
Tamil Nadu has 1.9 donors per million and Chennai 14.3 per million, said senior cardio-thoracic surgeon Paul Ramesh, who along with Anand K. Khakhar, programme director for Centre for Liver Disease and Transplantation at the hospital, and P. Balaji, member secretary, Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu, also participated.
Families who gave the gift of life to others by donating their loved ones’ organs were honoured at the SIMS Hospital on Friday. The families and hospital staff pledged to create awareness.
Earlier, a rally was flagged off by the State Health Minister on the Marina. At the Cancer Institute, Adyar, a human chain was organised to create awareness on the importance of donating stem cells to save the lives of patients with certain cancers.
