Green corridor set up by cops helps 47-yr-old get the heart of teenager

Kolkata: The city witnessed another green corridor on Tuesday night when the heart retrieved from a 16-year-old boy, who was declared brain dead at a hospital in Mumbai, was taken to the Fortis Hospital in the city to be transplanted on a 47-year old woman.

The heart was harvested from the youth at 6:40 pm at Global Hospital, Mumbai, after he met with an accident and was declared brain dead by the doctors at the hospital.

A team of doctors headed by cardiovascular surgeons — KM Mandana and Tapas Roychowdhury —performed the surgery and gave a fresh lease of life to Anusha Adhikary (47) at the Fortis Hospital. At present, Adhikary has been kept under ventilation.

According to the hospital doctors, the heart transplant was successful but they were yet to see how the patient responds in the post-operative scenario.

This is the fourth heart transplant carried out by the Fortis Hospital so far. The heart of the 16-year-old boy was brought from Mumbai. Hospital sources said the heart started beating again in the body of the recipient. She is stable and has regained consciousness.

The city police facilitated a green corridor between the Calcutta Airport and the private hospital in Mukundapur covering a distance of 18 km. It took about 16 minutes and 23 seconds to take the organ to the hospital from the airport.

There had been a spur in organ transplantations in Bengal in the past two years due to awareness campaigns carried out by the state government. The state health department has been conducting camps at both the government-run and private hospitals and the efforts have started yielding results.

According to a senior official of the state Health department, 14 organ transplant surgeries have been conducted in the state.

Calcutta Medical College and Hospital conducted two heart transplants at free of cost a few months back.

The whole process is done through a register maintained by the Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO) having names of potential receivers who urgently require organs. A number of important organ transplantations have already been conducted at various government-run medical colleges, including the SSKM Hospital and Calcutta Medical College and Hospital.