Parents donated organs of brain-dead son

COIMBATORE: Displaying enormous mental courage during an hour of personal grief, a couple from Tirupur donated the vital organs of their brain-dead teenaged son, here on Sunday. Class X student Sanjay Suresh (16), was declared brain-dead by doctors of two private hospitals where he was admitted with a grievous head injury sustained in a road accident in Tirupur district on Friday.The organs were harvested at the Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital (KMCH) in Coimbatore and sent to different recipients including two patients in Chennai.A student of St John’s School in Tirupur, Sanjay had appeared for the Board Examination last week and was at home during a three-day break between the exams. He met with an accident when he had gone to a shop near his house on Friday. A bleeding Sanjay was taken to a private hospital in the neighbourhood where doctors declared him to be brain-dead. His parents NKN Suresh and Kavitha then rushed him to the KMCH, where surgeons battled in vain for 24 hours before certifying that he was brain-dead.After the initial struggle to come to terms with the tragedy, Sanjay’s parents and relatives decided that his vital organs, which were intact, must continue to ‘function’ and requested doctors to facilitate an organ harvest. “It was his wish. On his last birthday on October 22, he told me that he wanted to donate his eyes. I had chided him saying he was too young to think about it,” recalled his mother Kavitha. “He was a caring child who was forever concerned about others and had ambitions of joining the armed forces to serve the country. We held him back as he was our first-born. No one thought we would lose him prematurely like this,” she said wiping tears. Sanjay was an NCC cadet and also had a black belt in Karate.According to KMCH chairman Dr Nalla G Palanisamy, “We encouraged the parents to contact the Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network (MOHAN) Foundation in Chennai.”Sanjay’s aunt Vijayakumari acknowledged the understanding role played by Dr Palanisamy in facilitating the organ harvest. While Sanjay’s kidneys were retained by the KMCH, his liver and heart valves were airlifted to Chennai in coordination with the Global Hospitals. His eyes were donated to the Sankara Eye Care Institutions in the city.