Organ donation: Teen gives lease of life to 4 at PGI

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 15

A 19-year-old boy, who died in a road accident in Himachal Pradesh, gave a new lease of life to four patients through organ donation. Harsh Panwar’s family donated his kidneys and corneas, which helped two renal failure patients and two corneal blind patients. The organs were transplanted at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh.

Harsh was rushed to the PGI in a critical condition on March 8 and was declared brain dead two days later. The transplant coordinator at the PGI approached the family to request for organ donation, to which they agreed. The intensive care unit maintained the donor, while the labs did the cross-matching and the Nephrology Department identified the matching recipients.

The transplant teams then retrieved the kidneys and transplanted them into two renal failure patients. The corneas were also harvested and transplanted, restoring the sight of two other patients.

Speaking about the family’s decision, Sanjay Kumar, Harsh’s father, said: “We said yes to organ donation because we knew that this could help someone else and they wouldn’t need to go through the heartache that we were going through. We have done it for our son.”

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