What better gift can a person give to another than a new lease of life! Awareness on the importance of organ donation has been spreading widely over the past few years. And people in Kolkata are always ahead in taking up good causes. People here do not have to be coaxed and cajoled into donating organs to critical patients. Over the past couple of years, the city has witnessed several organ donations and transplants taking place.
And once again, World Organ Donation Day, August 13, 2019, saw Manisha Roy’s family agreeing to donate her organs after she was declared brain dead. In a noble gesture, the family of the 19-year-old woman, from Kolkata’s Maniktala made the poignant decision to donate her organs overcoming their grief, thus keeping her memory alive by breathing a new lease of life to three moribund patients who would receive her liver and two kidneys.
Working closely with the Nodal Officer for organ donation, Department of Health and Family Welfare and the Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (ROTTO), the organs were successfully harvested at Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals (AGHL), Kolkata, and a green corridor facilitated by the Kolkata Police ensured that one of the donated kidneys reach SSKM Hospital in 15 minutes after it was retrieved from the donor.
At AGHL, the liver was transplanted to a 59-year-old man from Kolkata under the supervision of Dr Mahesh Goenka, senior gastroenterologist and director, Institute of Gastro Sciences and Liver, AGHL and the other kidney was transplanted to a 30-year-old lady from Howrah in a surgery supervised by Dr Lalit Kumar Agarwal, AGHL.
AGHL, Kolkata, is a part of the Apollo Transplant Institutes (ATI) network, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive solid organ transplant programmes. AGHL has successfully conducted over 1,000 solid organ transplants.
‘Health Dept helping organ donation movement gain momentum’
‘The State Health Department has been putting in relentless efforts to make the organ donation movement in Bengal gain momentum. Initiated on World Organ Donation Day, the deceased’s transplant that took place in our hospital today, where the parents of a young woman came forward to donate her organs, bears testimony to the success of such initiatives.’
- Rana Dasgupta, CEO, Apollo Hospitals, Kolkata
