Even as the 23-year-old gangrape victim was flown to Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital for further healthcare, experts in India say that bowel transplant is a tough possibility as of now.
Terming the decision to fly her abroad as “political,” Dr Samiran Nundy of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, who conducted the first-ever bowel transplant in India, said that, “I cannot understand this decision to fly her to Singapore. The condition to conduct transplant is at least few months away. First, her life has to be saved first. She needs intensive care, the infection has to settle, she has to be fed through veins properly and gain some weight before the doctors think about transplant,” he said. Dr Nundy, chairman, department of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation and his team, had conducted the intestinal transplant in July 2011.
However, the recipient developed some infection after six weeks of transplant and died. This was the first ever transplant from a living donor in the country. Moved by the plight of the 23-year-old rape victim who had lost most of her intestines in the brutal assault, the management of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital had even come forward to offer free intestinal transplantation and the subsequent treatment to the victim.
“This shows that the Government of India does not have confidence in the doctors and the healthcare system here. Probably, it is a political decision being taken,” lamented Dr Nundy. In fact, the website of the Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital shows that they are well equipped only to conduct haematopoietic/bone marrow stem cell transplant, living donor kidney transplant.
“Their website doesn’t mention that they have conducted bowel transplant ever,” said one of the doctors.
Dr Naresh Trehan, top cardiac surgeon who assisted the team of doctors in Safdarjung, said that “There is a scarcity of deceased donor organs in India. In Singapore, cadavers are more. So this could be a help for her. Otherwise doctors were doing well here,” he told this newspaper.