The ambulance carrying the heart of the two-year-old, rushing to the HAL Airport through the green channel created by Bengaluru Traffic Police, en route Chennai for a transplant.
The heart of a two-year-old boy who died on Friday morning at a hospital in Bengaluru was successfully transplanted into another young child in Chennai. The heart was rushed from one city to another, all within the space of four hours.
The Bengaluru police had assigned 25 men to ensure that the ambulance carrying the heart got a signal-free ride from the hospital to the airport, a distance of two kilometres. From there, the heart was taken in an air ambulance to the Chennai airport, after which it was rushed to Fortis Hospital in Chennai, through a special route configured by the Chennai Traffic Police to ensure there were no delays.
"Our men were called in and in just those 2-3 kilometers, we made it signal free," said B Dayananda, Traffic Commissioner, Bangalore.
The recipient of the heart is a two-year-old Russian boy. The first transplant procedure lasted for six hours from 1:30 pm to 7:30 pm. Doctors are now monitoring the condition of the young patient till the heart stabilizes.
The parents of the baby who died this morning were shattered, but agreed to donate his organs, said doctors.
This is the second time in four months when traffic police facilitated a 'green corridor' (traffic-free roads) to transport a heart from one city to another in record time.
The heart of a 37-year-old woman who died was harvested on September 3 at a private hospital in the city's south-west suburb and flown to Fortis Hospital in Chennai in a special aircraft for transplanting into a 60-year-old patient within four hours.