The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : FORTE’s action saves teenager

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

FORTE’s action saves teenager

Alladi Jayasri

Her family had given up all hope

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Rumaina Hafeez

BANGALORE: For Raqiba and Mohammed Abdul Hafeez, their 16-year-old daughter Rumaina is the miracle that many parents of children with kidney failure would give their own life for.

This hearing-impaired girl, who attends the Sheila Kotwala Institute for the Deaf, has been given a new lease of life having received a kidney from a brain-dead donor four years ago.

She developed kidney failure in 2003, when she was 12, and her father, a fitter and tailor, began doing the rounds of hospitals and speciality centres trying to do what was needed. He was soon spending most of his meagre earnings on dialysis for Rumaina.

Mounting costs caught up with them and Ms. Raqiba seriously considered donating her own kidney to her precious daughter, her second child. But there were Rumaina’s elder brother and two little sisters to take care of, and Ms. Raqiba’s parents reminded her that if “anything happened to her” there would be no one to look after the family, Rumaina included.

In the beginning, Rumaina, who had always been a happy child despite her disability, accepted her situation and made light of it. She would not hear of taking her mother’s kidney, and would suffer the pain and long hours of dialysis without complaint.

But when the money ran out and dialysis as a treatment option was becoming ineffective, the family — Rumaina too – was faced with the possibility of her death. For nearly a month, the family stopped taking her for dialysis at St. John’s Hospital.

A slim ray of hope made an appearance when Rumaina’s doctor, paediatric nephrologist K.D. Phadke, recommended that she register for a cadaver donor with the Foundation for Organ Retrieval and Transplant Education (FORTE), a non-profit organisation that was promoting and facilitating cadaver organ transplant. Rumaina registered, but in a few weeks became seriously ill. “Rumaina now began to beg me to give her mine, and replace it with the kidney that FORTE would provide”, said Ms. Raqiba in whose memory the pain of her daughter’s suffering is fresh. Then around the season of Ramzan, the miracle that the family didn’t even dare to hope for, happened. Rumaina’s Ramzan prayers were answered.

FORTE found a donor whose kidney would suit Rumaina. Four years later, Rumaina is a seventh standard student, and a topper with ambitions of becoming a computer engineer. She loves to sketch and paint and is a good mehendi artist too.

But Dr. Phadke’s advice to register with FORTE changed everything, and when a kidney became available, Rumaina’s miraculous chance to live again has left them grateful to the family of the donor whose kidney saved their daughter.

Rumaina’s story is surely one that should strengthen the brain-dead organ donation programme and inspire people to pledge their organs in their lifetime.

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