A 30 year old was declared brain  dead in a hospital in Hyderabad. The family was extremely motivated to donate all the organs of their loved one. MOHAN foundation’s counsellors were called in and they provided the family with emotional support while the formalities were being taken care of. The donor belonged to the A positive blood group, however, there were no liver or heart failure patients of that blood group waiting for a transplant in Hyderabad. The Initiative for of Organ Sharing (INOS) group of MOHAN Foundation swung into action. The motto of INOS, since its inception, has been “ organs  should not be wasted. They should be treated like a national resource.”

Five organs – aPair of kidneys, a pair of corneas and the liver – were to be donated. The kidneys were to be shared between two local hospitals as were the corneas. But, since, there was no local recipient for the liver, INOS decided to look further afield.

A doctor from Kerala was on the liver transplant waiting list at Sri Ganga ram Hospital, Delhi, and he desperately required surgery. The logistics of retrieving the liver in Hyderabad and then sending it to Delhi was difficult; hence an alternative strategy was worked out. Both the recipient from Kerala and his surgeon from Delhi were asked to fly into Hyderabad. The liver transplant surgery was successfully planned with minimum cold ischemia time in Hyderabad. The advantage of the stratedy was that it saved at least Rs. 1,80,000, in terms of not having to hire a chartered flight to transport the liver, and it also minimized the cold ischemia time.

In India, a liver transplant surgery costs about rs. 10-15 lakhs. The problem has been a lack of organ donors. MOHAN Foundation’s INOS network operates in three to four states and it maintains a time sensitive waiting list of patients who require a transplant