PANAJI: The world came crashing down for twenty-something Jagruti and her two-year-old child on Monday night: their 25-year-old husband and father, Govind Yadav, was declared brain dead, a victim of a hit-and-run accident at Mapusa.
But she rose above the emotional stress to heed the request of the Goa Medical College’s team of doctors and consented to donate her husband’s organs, giving a new lease of life to five other people in different parts of the country, including two in Goa.
According to GMC Dean, Dr Shivanand Bandekar, four organs of Govind — heart, lungs, liver and kidneys — were successfully harvested by the SOTTO team.
The Goa police assisted in creating ‘green corridors’ between GMC and the two airports — Mopa and Dabolim — and helped ensure swift navigation for the ambulances carrying the organs, which eventually made their way to Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi.
Bandekar said that one kidney each was transplanted to two waitlisted patients, both women aged 35 and 36, at the GMC itself. The heart was allocated to a 55-year-old man at H N Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai, and the liver was transplanted to a 39-year-old man at Zydus Hospital in Ahmedabad.
The lungs were allocated through the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO) to Apollo Hospital in Delhi, he added.
Meanwhile, Jagruti and her two-year-old child, along with other family members, were honoured for her courageous decision to consent to organ donation at a special function held at the GMC library’s amphitheatre on Tuesday evening by Health Minister Vishwajit Rane.
Bandekar, several heads of departments and senior doctors were present, where Rane praised Jagruti for her decision and announced that his personal trust would support the entire education of their child.
Govind worked as a labourer at a construction site in Bicholim and hailed from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. This was the sixth such instance where the SOTTO team at GMC successfully shouldered an organ donation.