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Kerala’s Ernakulam General Hospital is set to conduct its first heart transplant on Monday, December 22, a milestone that will make it the first general hospital in the country to perform the complex procedure, according to hospital officials.
The donor heart obtained from a 47-year-old Kollam native who was declared brain dead after a road accident will be transplanted into a 23-year-old Nepali national, Durga Kami, also known as Arpana, who has been undergoing treatment in Kerala for almost a year.
According to news reports, an eight-member medical team from Ernakulam GH, including senior cardiothoracic surgeons Dr George Valuran, Dr Paul Thomas and Dr Geo Paul, traveled to Thiruvananthapuram on Monday morning to retrieve the organ from the Government Medical College Hospital. The heart was later taken to Kochi for transplant.
Kami suffers from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition that causes the heart muscle to become abnormally thick. His mother and sister had also died of the same disease earlier. Doctors said she had been on the transplant waiting list for several months and her condition was worsening.
Kami, originally from Nepal, was living in an orphanage and learned about advanced treatment facilities in Kerala. With the support of well-wishers, she traveled to the state with her brother earlier this year, seeking life-saving treatment.
As a foreign national, she was not entitled to priority allocation under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act. She later approached the Kerala High Court, which granted her priority status after considering her serious medical condition.
Apart from the heart, other organs obtained from the donor were allotted to six recipients, officials said. Organ donation and transplantation activities in the state are coordinated by the Kerala State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (K-SOTTO).
Hospital officials described the transplant as a historic moment for public healthcare, underscoring the growing capabilities of district-level government hospitals in handling advanced medical procedures.
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