Delhi: 5-year-old girl’s parents donate her organs to help other kids live

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Desk,30-Apr; The parents of a girl who was declared brain dead at AIIMS Trauma Centre after receiving gunshot injury just two months shy of her sixth birthday donated her heart, liver, kidneys and corneas on Friday.After doctors confirmed that she was brain-dead, the details were shared by Organ Retrieval And Banking Organization (ORBO-AIIMS) with NOTTO which subsequently allotted the organs to the recipients going by a waiting list.“Our daughter is no more. But at least someone else’s child will survive because of her organs. That’s why we decided to donate,” Harnarayan Prajapati, the bereaved father, a tailor by profession,Confirmed.Organ donation by children is rare. Dr Deepak Gupta, professor of neurosurgery at AIIMS, said this is the first time such a young child’s family has agreed to donate the organs post brain death at the trauma centre.“I salute the family. They put aside the grief of losing their young daughter and agreed to donate her organs so someone else could be saved,” Dr Gupta said. The girl, named Roli, allegedly suffered gunshot injury while playing at her house in Noida on Wednesday. The gunshot injury was confirmed in CT scan also, the AIIMS professor said. “When she was rushed to AIIMS, her condition was very critical. We tried to save her but finally, on Friday, she was declared brain dead. After that, our counsellors approached them with a request for organ donation and consent was taken,” he said.The doctors retrieved the liver, two kidneys, heart valves and corneas from the brain dead girl. The kidneys were being transplanted into a child at AIIMS while the liver was allocated to Indraprastha Apollo hospital by NOTTO where doctors prepared to conduct a liver transplant on another child from Lucknow.Dr Aarti Vij, chief of the Organ Retrieval and Banking Organisation (ORBO) at AIIMS, said this was the fourth organ donation from a brain dead person at the institute this year.Brain death results from a devastating brain injury, commonly due to head trauma, bleeding in the brain, stroke, or loss of blood flow to the brain after the heart stops (cardiac arrest).(CNS)