21-year-old gifts life to 2 after death

KOLKATA: A 21-year-old engineering student whose life was cut short by an accident gifted life to two others before breathing her last on Wednesday. Kidneys retrieved from the Haldia girl were transplanted on two acute renal failure patients — Debashish Mondal (20) and Kalyani Jha (40) in a night-long

operation at SSKM Hospital

.

Coming after a disappointing 2017 when the state had only one organ donation in November, critical care experts are enthused about the early start to the year with Wednesday’s donation. The year-long drought had left Debashish, Kalyan and hundreds of others waiting in an endless queue for a deceased organ.

Also, this is the first time that a patient has been declared brain dead in a government hospital. Till now, all the donors had been from private hospitals.

For Debashish, it was third-time lucky. He had been called to the hospital twice in 2016 for a possible deceased donated organ

transplant

. But they didn’t happen, the first time because the tissues didn’t match, and the second time because the

kidney

from the donor wasn’t in good condition.

“After the two disappointments in 2016, we waited all of last year for a call that never came. We had all but given up hope when we were told to rush Debashish to hospital on Wednesday,” said his mother Kabita.

Debashish has been suffering from kidney ailment for five years and had been forced to drop out of school to undergo dialysis. Staring at a situation that appeared hopeless, Debashish had begun to lapse into depression.

“When the call came from SSKM on Wednesday, he was initially apprehensive that the transplant would yet again not happen. It was only when he was prepared for the opertion theatre that he flashed a smile,” said his father Kiran, who is a rickshaw puller.

Kalyani, the recipient of the donor's second kidney, has been on dialysis for four years. Treatment costs at a private hospital in the first two years had drained the family's savings. The family had been pursuing treatment at SSKM for the past two years past two years. She was in the hospital OPD when her husband heard doctors calling up potential recipients.

“This is the first time we have had both brain death declaration, organ retrieval and transplant at a single hospital,” said IPGMER director Dr Ajay Ray.

The donor was riding pillion on a motorcycle on February 18 when she met with an accident in Haldia. The student of Haldia Institute of Technology was rushed to

Institute of Neurosciences Kolkata

(INK) with serious head injury. She was shifted to SSKM the next day. Doctors started counseling the family after they found the patient was brain dead.

Hospital sources said a workshop by Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO) that had sensitized doctors on the need to counsel patient's families once they assessed brain death led to the first brain death declaration at a government hospital and the successful transplants thereafter.

“We are working hard to streamline, coordinate and plug loopholes so that we see more such donations happening,” said Dr Arpita Raychaudhury, joint director ROTTO. A professor of nephrology at the hospital, it was Raychaudhury who coordinated the entire procedure till 5am on Thursday. The procedure of retrieving the organs had started at 9.30pm on Wednesday after the brain death declaration was made.

“I cannot thank the donor family enough. Their noble gesture had ensured a life to my wife,” said Dilip Jha whose wife got the second kidney.