• Feed RSS
Jaya Prada's husband underwent a live liver transplant. The donor died. The world has forgotten his death or perhaps the indian medical profession would be happier if the death was forgotten.

The Times of India cleverly archived the event.

"The case of the dead liver donor just got murkier. According to the Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Subhash D, 23, who donated part of his liver to actress-turned-politician Jaya Prada's husband Srikant Nahata, died due to pulmonary embolism on July 4"

The Times of India quite rightly questions how this man died while the medical establishment shut the case down. There was no investigation, no report, no efforts to learn from the matter and no recommendations made.

Strangely, Apollo did not see the need to conduct a post-mortem even though death is extremely rare in case of donors in a liver transplant. This is only the second known liver donor death in India. Director medical services, Apollo Hospitals, Anupam Sibal stated, ''We did not conduct post-mortem because there was no doubt in our minds as to why the donor died. If there was something wrong with the operation, he would have died straightaway and not 10 days after the transplant.''

The question still needs to be asked how Subhash suddenly developed pulmonary embolism, or the lowering of the heart rate, when he had so recently been found ''medically fit'' for the donor procedure?

The Director of Medical Services at Apollo raises an issue that has no scientific basis. Perhaps he believes that the world does not understand medicine. Many individuals die much later than 10 days following complications that have arisen during surgery. An example is an infection - there is no 10 day limitation to death :). While the Director of Medical Services at Apollo needs to go back to his surgical books, we ask the question - why is the medical establishment failing to scrutinise failing procedures?

Experts though are calling for changes in the law as examined by this article.

"Dr Harsh Jauhari, Chairman Department of Renal transmission, said: ‘‘Nobody can be sure about that. The Act states that the hospital has to set up an authorisation committee which can verify if there has been a possibility of some monetary transaction’’.Supreme Court lawyer H.S.Phoolka is of the view that the term is very wide and needs to be restricted. ‘‘This leaves a major loophole in the law and needs specification,’’ he said"
The next question that was asked - was the donor selling his organ?

So, the mystery continues...... but everyone has stopped asking questions. It is important to ascertain current statistics on how many donors in India have died due to intra-operative or post operative complications.