Woman Declared Brain Dead Helps Save Three Lives By Donating Organs

New Delhi: A woman who had suffered a critical head injury and was declared brain dead, donated her organs and saved at least three people.

The 57-year-old was brought to Delhi’s Aakash Hospital in Dwarka on March 28 and soon, doctors declared her to be brain dead. Later, her family gave a nod to her organ donation, The Times of India reported.

“According to the government’s allocation criteria, organs were harvested and transferred at 5 am on March 29; one of her kidneys was given to a patient at Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka, itself while the other one was sent to Apollo Hospital for transplantation in a 52-year-old. The woman’s liver was used for transplantation in a 71-year-old man admitted at Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon,” the hospital authorities told TOI.

“The donor’s corneas have been preserved in the eye bank of Shroff Eye Centre,” they added. The process of organ retrieval and the transplant took 20 hours to complete, Dr Vikas Agarwal, director and head of the department of urology, and kidney transplant at Aakash Healthcare, told TOI.

“It’s dismal to see that in India less than 1% of the braindead organs are utilised, while 99% are wasted due to lack of an organised and centralised system. The main cause is lack of consciousness or understanding of how important a donation can be for a person struggling for life,” he was quoted as saying