5-Year-Old Mumbai Girl Gets New Lease of Life After Brain-Dead MP Farmer Donates His Heart

A 5-year-old girl suffering from a rare heart condition got a new lease of life after the heart of a 41-year-old farmer from Madhya Pradesh was flown to Mumbai and transplanted in her.

Mumbai: When it comes to organ donation, many myths and misconceptions are prevalent in our society and India still has a long way to go. However, in a heartening trend, more and more people are becoming aware and organ donations are slowly and steadily on the rise. In one such case, a 5-year-old girl suffering from a rare heart condition got a new lease of life after the heart of a 41-year-old farmer from Madhya Pradesh was flown to Mumbai and transplanted in her.

According to officials from Indore’s Government Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, farmer Khum Singh Solanki’s body was airlifted to Mumbai on Tuesday night.

“The girl was suffering from a rare disease that caused her heart and surrounding areas to enlarge in an unusual manner. The heart retrieved from the farmer’s body was a bit small compared to the normal one,”  the dean of the medical college, Dr Sanjay Dixit, said.

Considering this unusual coincidence, the heart of an adult man was transplanted in the child’s body. The transplant surgery was completed late on Tuesday night, which is a rare case in the medical world, he said. The child’s condition was stable and doctors of the hospital in Mumbai are keeping a watch over her, Dixit said.

Solanki, a resident of Pipliya Lohar village of Dewas district, was critically injured in a road accident and was admitted to a private hospital in Indore. Doctors declared him brain dead on Tuesday, following which his family consented to donate his vital organs, and his heart, liver, kidney, and lungs were retrieved, officials said.

Solanki’s liver and kidneys were transplanted in the bodies of three persons in Indore, while his lungs were donated to a 38-year-old in Hyderabad. In the last six years in Indore, vital organs of 42 brain-dead persons had been donated to patients in Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Telangana, the officials added.

(With PTI inputs)