Kolkata, (Samajweekly) The Indian Armed Forces is one large family and this belief was enforced further on Monday when both kidneys of a 70-year-old brain dead woman were transplanted — one of them to a 30-year-old serving soldier and the other to a 28-year-old wife of another — at the Command Hospital (Eastern Command) in Kolkata on Monday.
The brain dead woman was the mother of a soldier from the Birbhum district of West Bengal, who is now posted in Uttar Pradesh.
“The woman was declared brain dead on Sunday. Despite his personal grief, her son announced that he would like to see his mother live on by donating her kidneys. He maintained that she would be doing the family proud. The transplants were carried out accordingly and the team of doctors involved have announced that the procedures were successful. This is the second cadaveric organic transplant at Command Hospital, Kolkata. The first one took place in August 2020,” an official of the Army’s Eastern Command said.
The first cadaveric kidney transplant took place in 2019. There have been five (5) cadaveric kidney transplants this year. According to doctors, these two transplants took the total number of kidney donations to 207 since the inception of the programme. Of these, 12 were cadaveric transplants while the remaining 195 kidneys came from live donors.
“We are trying to promote organ donations at Command Hospital. Recently, during World Kidney Day on March 9, an appeal was sent across for people to pledge their organs. The families of organ donors were also felicitated,” the official added.
