Cop needing lung transplant finds help in stranger

CHENNAI: A city traffic police constable, who doctors give no chance of survival without an expensive lung transplant, went for months without any hope of receiving treatment till a stranger — a techie from Bengaluru — started a battle to save his life.
Constable M Balakrishnan, who was with the Chennai city police for 14 years, spending the last two controlling traffic in highly congested Manali, says he will forever be grateful to J Raghavendra, a software engineer with a leading IT firm.
Raghavendra, who learned of the constable’s plight through a common friend, Madhan of Chennai, started an online campaign, ‘Help Balakrishnan To Undergo Lung Transplant, on crowdfunding platform Milaap. The initiative has so far raised Rs 3.17 lakh of the Rs 25 lakh the policeman has to pay for the lung transplant.
“I decided to start an online initiative to collect funds for Balakrishnan’s treatment,” Raghavendra says. “We have gathered Rs 3.17 lakh so far. I’m hoping for more generosity from people for the transplant.”
Though a transplant of the kind usually costs up to Rs 45 lakh, multispecialty hospital Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre, has offered to perform the operation for Rs25 lakh in view of the fact that Balakrishnan fell critically ill in the line of service to the public.
The policeman is registered as a patient in need of a lung transplant and is waiting for a compatible donor. But Balakrishnan, the only breadwinner of his family, is now back home from hospital and on a regimen of expensive drugs.
The chemical used to preserve after finding a compatible donor and harvesting the organ is also costly, at Rs 70,000 per litre.
“To preserve the lung, we need at least eight litres of the chemical. That increases the surgery cost,” says SRMC professor Dr T Periyasamy.
Raghavendra says one may donate to Balakrishnan at https://milaap.org/fundraisers/savebalakrishnan.