Metro, green corridor help save three lives in Chennai

Chennai, Feb 27 (PTI) In a coordinated effort on Friday involving the Chennai Metro Ltd, airport authorities, Tamil Nadu Network for Organ Sharing, and the Tamil Nadu police, three life-saving organ transplants were successfully facilitated at Apollo Hospitals here.

While Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) on Friday deployed an exclusive dedicated train to transport a heart and lungs for emergency transplantation, lungs were also transported from Trichy to Chennai through a specially coordinated green corridor.

Lungs and a heart that reached Apollo Hospitals in record time were retrieved from a 17-year-old donor in Madurai. The organs were flown from Madurai to Chennai International Airport, where a special metro train was waiting to ferry the medical team and the life-saving cargo, stated a press release issued by Apollo Hospitals.

By bypassing city traffic and utilising the metro corridor, the transit from the airport to the DMS Metro Station was completed in just nine minutes, with the total journey to the hospital taking only 16 minutes.

Hospital officials stated that this seamless transit was critical in providing a renewed lease of life to a 43-year-old patient who received a heart transplant and a 34-year-old who underwent a bilateral lung transplant.

Meanwhile, organ transfer via road, through green corridor, was made possible with the support of the Tamil Nadu Police.

The donated organs have given a new lease of life to three patients -- a 69-year-old who received a single lung transplant, a 34-year-old who underwent a bilateral lung transplant, and a 43-year-old who received a life-saving heart transplant. PTI JR JR ROH