In a significant milestone for public healthcare, Osmania General Hospital (OGH) successfully performed five liver transplants in just one month, saving the lives of two-year-old to forty-year-old patients suffering from rare genetic liver diseases.
The transplants include three cadaver liver transplants from Jeevandan and two live donor transplants for patients from extremely low-income backgrounds.
Prof Dr Madhusudhan, Head of Surgical Gastroenterology at OGH who led the team of specialists told The Pioneer, “These patients belong to lower income family groups, mostly daily wage labourers and they keep wandering around private hospitals to reduce the charges because private hospitals charge between Rs 30-40 lakh for such procedures.”
The surgeries were conducted free of cost under the Aarogyasri scheme.
“We also received criticism on how the government hospitals follow the process, after surgeries. So, we planned that we will be helpful to our patients life-long. We have a WhatsApp group with our liver transplant patients and whenever they face mild symptoms of fever or cold they approach us and we recommend them to nearby hospitals because most private hospitals do not touch the liver transplant patient,” he added.
“Every first Wednesday of a month we ask our patients to visit us for immunosuppression medication free of cost, which is mandatory for liver transplant patients.”
The team behind the transplants included top specialists Prof CH Madhusudhan, Prof Abhimanyu, Prof Uma Devi, Prof Ramesh Kumar, Prof Vijay Kumar (HOD Paediatrics, Niloufer), Prof Madhavi, Prof Raghu, Prof Nadeem, Dr Vijaya Pavan, and many others.
