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Heartbreak and a happy family

Read this in Hindi:

रूसी लड़की को मिला बेंगलुरु के बच्चे का दिल

BENGALURU/CHENNAI: This little boy has achieved much more than others do in an entire lifetime. At just 2 years and 10 months, he’s given life and light to other children in Karnataka – and even as far as in Russia.Declared brain dead on Thursday, the boy’s heart was airlifted from Bengaluru to Chennai on Friday afternoon in less than an hour. In the Tamil Nadu capital, doctors transplanted the heart successfully into a Russian child in a surgery that lasted nearly eight hours,The Bengaluru boy was admitted to a Bengaluru nursing home on December 12 after he developed high fever. When the fever didn’t subside, the boy was given an injection. His condition worsened and he was moved to the ICU. The boy’s parents – his father is a techie and mother a homemaker – shifted him to Manipal Hospitals on December 14.Despite doctors’ best efforts, there was no improvement in the boy’s condition. At 4.30pm on Thursday, he was declared brain dead. The Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka (ZCCK) reacted swiftly on being intimated about organs available through cadaver donation, and matched them with needy patients, who underwent transplants in private hospitals.On Friday, in an operation that lasted less than an hour, the baby’s vital organs such as his heart, kidneys, liver and eyes were harvested. The heart was airlifted in a speedy operation from Manipal Hospitals to Fortis Malar Hospital, Chennai, on a chartered flight from HAL airport.The travel time was all of 47 minutes – the ambulance from Manipal Hospitals to HAL airport took 1 minute 20 seconds to cover 3.5 km; the flight reached Chennai in 34 minutes; and an ambulance ferried the heart, packed in a preservation liquid in sub-zero temperature, in 11 minutes to the hospital, 12 km away.The boy’s cornea was sent to matching recipients in Narayana Nethralaya, his liver to Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta Road, and kidneys to Sagar Hospital. When the baby’s heart didn’t match that of any patient in Bengaluru hospitals, a search was made to find a suitable recipient in Chennai.“The potential recipient was found at Fortis, Chennai,” said Manjula KU, from ZCCK who coordinated the transplant.The Russian child had been diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy a few months ago and admitted to Fortis Malar last month, after he enrolled in the transplant registry for a heart. In dilated cardiomyopathy, the heart swells and loses its capacity to pump blood efficiently. Doctors had told the child’s parents that a heart transplant was the only solution.Luckily for the boy, the good news came on Friday, from Bengaluru. A team from Fortis Malar went to Bengaluru and retrieved the heart.“The procedure began a little ahead of 2pm where we prepped the patient for surgery. As soon as the heart arrived by 2.10pm, things began to move at full swing. Now the heart is beating well, and the surgery is a success,” said a doctor at Fortis Malar who was part of the surgical team.“It had been a very trying time for the past one month and I could not control my tears when I finally saw the heart arrive at the hospital from the airport. All I could do was join my hands in prayer all through the day hoping that the surgery would be a success,” said the child’s mother, with the help of a translator at the hospital.