The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : An act of courage in testing times

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Monday, May 07, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

An act of courage in testing times

Ramya Kannan

Brain dead child's organs give life to two other people Brain dead child's organs give life to two other people

CHENNAI: Disha, 10, lives on even after death.

The votaries of cadaver organ donation programme in the State will find a mascot for their programme in this story of how a young girl's organs — two kidneys and a liver — helped two other people survive.

Disha, daughter of Mahavir and Suman Khitcha, was a bright and active girl and a student of St. Mary's School, Red Hills. When their fourth daughter was nine years old, Mahavir and Suman took Disha to the doctor last June, presumably to treat a stomach bug that was causing her to throw up. They were told instead that their child had brain tumour. "We always thought we could cure her. We did not think she would die, that too within a year. Disha was never told that she would die of the tumour; I told her that she would be healthy again, because that was what I believed too," Mr. Khitcha said, speaking to The Hindu just a week after he made the decision to donate his brain dead child's organs. When a member of the staff of Kumaran Hospital, Kilpauk, raised the subject of organ donation with the family after the child was brain dead for days, Mr. Khitcha agreed immediately.

On April 25, a team of gastroenterologists, headed by R.P. Shanmugam and P. Shiva Kumar, and a urology team, headed by D. Chandrasekaran and Balaraman, got to work to harvest the organs and use them for transplant patients.

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