category Regional, chandigarh , , tags Regional, chandigarh , , DW BUREAU Chandigarh A ten-month-old infant, who died during treatment at a hospital here, became a beacon of hope for two organ-failure patients when the child s parents decided to donate his organs. The brave decision by the boy s parents saved the lives of two patients suffering from end-stage organ failure and battling for survival, one at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in New Delhi and another at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education Research (PGIMER) here. Dr Vivek Lal, PGIMER Director, Friday expressed the institute s indebtedness to the donor family who hail from a village in the Jagadhri area of Haryana s Yamunanagar district. It is an extremely hard decision, but the donor family is a ray of hope for organ failure patients, Lal said. We agreed to the organ donation because we knew this could help someone else and they wouldn t need to go through the heartache that we were going through. We knew it was the right thing to do, said the parents of the infant. According to a statement issued by PGIMER here on Friday, the child slipped into a coma on July 12 due to a fatal head injury after falling from his baby cot. The family rushed the infant to a local civil hospital and then to a private hospital. However, due to a worsening prognosis, he was shifted to PGIMER here in an extremely critical condition on July 17 where he died two days later during treatment, the statement said. After the child was declared brain dead on July 19, the transplant coordinators at PGIMER approached his parents to request if they could consider organ donation, the statement added. The resolute and brave heart father showcased immense grit and consented for organ donation, PGIMER said in its statement. We hope our son s story will inspire families who find themselves in the same position, said the grieving father. Dr Vipin Koushal, Additional Medical Superintendent at PGIMER, said, After the family s consent, we secured his liver and kidneys. Once the donor organs became available, everyone swiftly got into action leaving no stone unturned. As the cross-matching indicated no matching recipient for liver in PGIMER, we immediately got in touch with other transplant hospitals to explore options for matching recipients and finally, the child s liver was allocated to an 11-month-old boy admitted at ILBS, New Delhi, Koushal, also the acting Nodal Officer of the Regional cum State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (North), said. The liver transplantation was conducted with the help of the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO), Koushal said. To ensure safe and speedy transport of the harvested organs, a green corridor was created on Thursday in conjunction with the retrieval timings from PGIMER to the airport here for the Delhi-bound flight scheduled at 1.15 pm, he added. Dr Ashish Sharma, Head of Department, Renal Transplant Surgery, PGIMER, who along with his team, accomplished the dual transplant, said, This case was a challenging one. The donor was an infant, so the organ retrieval was not a routine procedure and demanded extreme deftness and skill. (editor dailyworld.in)