A Brain Dead Youth from Jaipur Saves 4 Lives through Organ Donation

The 24-year-old Naveen Meena was a student of a private college and was also working part time. He met a road accident in Jaipur on Saturday and got badly injured. He was admitted to SMS hospital Jaipur where the doctors declared him ‘brain dead’ on Monday.

What is ‘brain dead’?

‘Brain dead’ means to be in a state when you suffer from complete and irreversible loss of brain function. The brain is not even efficient of performing involuntary activity like breathing or pumping blood, which is necessary to sustain life.

After the youth was declared brain dead, counseling of his parents was conducted so as to convince them to donate the organs of their deceased son. His parents donated his organs, which saved 4 lives through cadaver transplant. Vinay Tomar, coordinator of organ transplant said that the deceased kidneys were transplanted to 2 patients at the SMS hospital, his liver was transplanted to a patient at a private hospital and his heart was taken all the way to a private hospital in Delhi by air.

The Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Delhi had received a call from SMS Jaipur regarding the availability of a heart. A transplant team from FEHI travelled on a special flight to Jaipur to airlift the heart of the deceased and succeeded in bringing the heart to Delhi in minimum time. This became possible because they had already created a Green Corridor, a pre-fixed route through which the 18.2km distance between Delhi Airport and Fortis Escorts Heart Institute was covered in merely 16 mins.

The team at Fortis then successfully performed a heart transplant on a 54-year-old man and saved his life. The man, who received the donor heart from Jaipur, belongs to Gorakhpur.

The deceased youth’s father Shankar Lal Meena said, “My son has given life to 4 people and I am proud of that,’’.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Rajendra Rathore paid visited the hospital to pay floral tribute to the deceased and to console his family. Mr. Rathore also thanked the team of the NGO, who requested and convinced the family to donate organs of their deceased son. The minister then took some time reviewing the progress in cadaver transplants. He directed officials to provide free medicines for brain dead patients and also asked them to carry out all necessary testing for free in such cases.