Cops create green corridor for speedy transport of liver for transplant
LUCKNOW: Liver of a brain dead female patient was retrieved at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) on Wednesday and transported to the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS), New Delhi, for a transplant there. Significantly, the city police made a congestion-free green corridor (KGMU—Hazratganj— Bandariabagh—Cantonment— VIP road—airport) that is about 28-kilometres to get the organ transported safely and on time.
The green corridor is a special travel route sans red lights to ensure transportation in minimal time with traffic signals being on manual mode.
Accordingly, all traffic movement was restricted till the passage of the ambulance carrying the organ, which reached the airport non-stop in half-an-hour. In a normal situation, covering the distance would have taken 50 minutes or more from the KGMU.
The liver was retrieved by a team of surgeons led by Prof Abhijit Chandra, HoD gastro surgery, who is also heading the organ retrieval programme at the KGMU.
“The 50-year-old patient was suffering from kidney failure. When she became brain dead, the family decided to donate the organ, which we retrieved at around 4 pm. Now we are taking it to Delhi in a commercial flight,” said Prof Chandra, who left for New Delhi from Amausi airport at 6.30 pm. The KGMU team, which was was provided a green corridor in New Delhi also, reached ILBS at around 7.45 pm. “We got an ambulance standing next to the airplane as soon as it landed at the New Delhi airport and we could reach ILBS in 10-15 minutes. Everything happened on time,” said Prof Abhijit Chandra over telephone from New Delhi.
The KGMU had contacted SSP Rajesh Pandey for this, following which arrangements, in which the police department and traffic police coordinated, were made to provide a green corridor to the ambulance till the airport.
The kidney was first offered to PGI but later it was decided that the same may be given to ILBS. The patient was a schools teacher and lived with her brother, a government doctor with the provincial medical services (PMS).
KGMU is itself working on a project to start transplant operations. As it runs Trauma Centre, doctors say the number of brain dead patients is high and retrieving organs from brain dead patients with the consent of the family can help many patients in need of organ transplant operations.