TNI Bureau: Setting an example of humanity, the owner of the Ganga Ram Hospital donated his body organs to three people giving them new lives. Sir Ganga Ram Trust Society Chairman Tej Ram, who passed away recently, donated his two kidneys and liver to three poor patients.
Following the death of Tej Ram on September 3 due to brain hemorrhage at the age of 88, his daughter Vinita Chopra and son Vijay Ram willingly agreed to fulfill their father’s last wish and donated his organs to the patients.
A K Seth, the Secretary, Board of Trust Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) has informed that “It was his last wish to not just donate his organs but to give it to poor people. He had utmost concern for the poors and was always keen on doing the maximum for them.”
Accordingly, the hospital retrieved his two kidneys and liver and successfully implanted them in three patients. All the three recipient patients are doing great after the transplants.
While Ram’s liver was transplanted to a 35 year old patient, a small businessman, suffering from liver failure due to hepatitis–C, wife of a peon of the same hospital and another patient from a lower middle class family, both of whom were in dire need of transplantation, were the two people to got transplanted one kidney each. Even costs of the transplants (surgery process) were donpatoe by the hospital itself. This donation makes Ram the oldest organ donor in the country.
Tej Ram was the grandson of great philanthropist late Sir Ganga Ram and was associated with Sir Ganga Ram Hospital for last 27 years.
Donation of body organs has been legalized and the Transplantation of Human Organ Act passed in 1994 regulates such cases. But practically the concept has hardly been accepted in Indian society, though there is huge demand for transplantation in the country.
A report has offered that currently there is a demand for 1, 50,000 kidney transplants, 2, 00,000 liver transplants and 1, 50,000 heart transplants in the country.
The hospital preferred to bear cost of the transplant to promote the cause of cadaver transplant among the donors in the country.
