Bengaluru boy's heart and lung flown to save two lives in Chennai

BENGALURU: In a first for the state, an air ambulance carrying a heart for a boy and a lung for a man took off from HAL airport here and landed at Chennai airport, where the organs were taken to two hospitals.
A green corridor was created in both cities to help ferry the organs for transplantation in time. Both the recipients have recovered. The organs were of a Bengaluru teenager, who died in an accident here.
On September 2, Dr Shalini Nalwad of ICATT-Kyathi, a Bengaluru-based air ambulance service, received word that she had to airlift a heart and a lung simultaneously to Chennai, where two critical patients, including a nine-year-old boy, were awaiting surgery.
"We had initially planned to transport the organs by air in the early hours of September 2, but bad weather forced us to suspend operations. With the weather turning favourable, the 15-year-old boy's organs were harvested at Baptist Hospital, Hebbal and at noon we started moving through the green corridor here," said Dr Nalwad.
A Beechcraft King Air C90 twin-engine plane waiting at HAL airport took off minutes past noon and flew towards Chennai's Kamaraj domestic airport. Soon after landing in Chennai, the medical professionals carrying the organs boarded ambulances once again and travelled through a green corridor created by Chennai city traffic police.
"The heart was taken to MGM Hospital, where a boy suffering from cardiomyopathy was admitted and needed a transplant. The lung reached Apollo Hospitals, Greams Road, where a 48-year-old man was waiting for it," added Dr Nalwad. The delivery was completed in 84 minutes from the time of leaving the Bengaluru hospital.