It’s a season of firsts in organ transplants in Mumbai. This time, a Green Corridor was created on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday to facilitate the quick transport of a heart from Pune’s Ruby Hall Hospital to Fortis Hospital in Mulund. The 188-km journey was completed in one hour and 35 minutes and a few hours later, the heart had been transplanted onto a 14-year-old Borivli boy.
On Thursday, a 28-year-old from Wai in Satara met with a road accident in Pune and suffered a head injury. When he could not be revived and was declared brain dead, his family agreed to donate his kidneys, liver and heart. The heart was retrieved by a team of Fortis doctors, who brought it to Mumbai.
For the police personnel manning the highway traffic control, it was the first time they had received such a request. A police officer said they received the call for a Green Corridor at 10.35 pm on Thursday.
“We were informed that a heart will be moved from Ruby Hall to Fortis. The traffic on the route was moved to the side and the ambulance was given a clear lane to the extreme right. A police car was deployed as the pilot and all points were informed that there should be no roadblocks for the car carrying the heart,” an officer said. The highway police have four posts on the Expressway and a pilot van was assigned at each section for the heart.
Fortis officials said they chose the road route as it seemed to be the best possible option after they were alerted about a possible heart donation. Given that the heart would have been brought late in the night, the traffic too wasn’t a concern.
The 14-year-old recipient, a patient of dilated cardiomyopathy, had been on the waitlist for over four months and his condition was deteriorating rapidly, officials said. “Our young patient is now stable and has been moved to the ICU. The next 48-72 hours will be critical and we will be monitoring him closely ,” Dr Anvay Mulay, Head, Cardiac Transplant Team, Fortis Hospital, said.
Cops pledge to donate organs
The city police are not restricting themselves to escorting orgtans. to lead by example as scores of people could benefit from donated organs. More than 200 city police officers and constables on Friday pledged to donate their organs during a public interaction between Commissioner of Police DD Padsalgikar and residents of the Mulund-Ghatkopar stretch.
Officials said the idea was conceived by DCP (Zone VII) Vinay Kumar Rathod, who also pledged his organs on Friday along with personnel with police stations like Ghatkopar, Vikhroli, Parksite, Bhandup and Mulund. The organ donation forms have been submitted to Sion Hospital, Mumbai police officers said.
The recipient, a patient of dilated cardiomyopathy, had been waiting for four months
