Lucknow, Aug 13 (IANS): The parents of a young teenager, born with a heart ailment, is eagerly waiting for a donor at a private hospital in Uttar Pradesh capital, that will give their daughter a new lease of life.
If it happens, this will be the first cardiac transplant in the city.
Most of the key government and private hospitals in the city are either geared up or are in the procedure or in the final stages of the permission.
As per data from the State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO), centres awaiting a donor include the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), King George's Medical University (KGMU) and Apollomedics Super Speciality Hospitals.
Those in the final stages are Medanta Medicity and Divine Heart Hospital.
Apollomedics can boast of having a first line cardiac transplant surgeon, who has learnt from Prof P Venugopal (the heart surgeon credited with the first cardiac transplant procedure in India) and has done five cardiac transplants.
“Awareness among patients who require cardiac transplants in also low. Many take their medical condition as fait accompli and wait for their end. But end-stage heart disease is not the end of life, there is hope,” said Bharat Dubey, cardiac surgeon at Apollomedics.
According to official estimates, about 50,000 people need cardiac transplant each year. Numbers also show that each one of these patients can get a new heart as about 80,000 enter the brain death stage before their actual demise across the globe annually.
India records eight million deaths annually and of these, an estimated 1 per cent, or approximately 80,000 cases, are brain deaths.
Dr Rakesh Kapoor, director, Medanta Medicity, said: "A lot depends on the call that the family of a brain dead person takes. Awareness holds the key. If a patient’s family is aware, the chances of convincing them to help someone in distress are higher."
The nodal officer SOTTO and head of hospital administration department at SGPGIMS, Prof R Harshvardhan, said: "The number of centres has gone up from 15 in 2017 to 54 now. The team is in the making but awareness activities are underway in full swing. More collaborations to sensitise the people in need and people who can help are in the pipeline. The efforts will bear fruits.”