A 49-year-old man suffering from end-stage heart disease received a new lease of life on Sunday after a live human heart was transported from Ghaziabad to Delhi in just 19 minutes, using a green corridor set up by traffic authorities.
The heart was harvested from a 35-year-old woman who had been declared brain dead due to a ruptured cerebral blood vessel. Her family consented to donate her organs, enabling the transplant to go ahead. The heart was retrieved from Yashoda Hospital in Ghaziabad and transported to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute on Okhla Road in Delhi, covering 17 kilometres between 11:40 am and 11:59 am.
The recipient, diagnosed with Ischemic Cardiomyopathy—a severe condition caused by restricted blood flow damaging the heart muscle—had been on the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) registry since August 2024, awaiting a suitable donor.
“The timely coordination between Delhi and Ghaziabad traffic police made this life-saving procedure possible,” said Dr Vikram Aggarwal, Facility Director, Fortis Escorts. “We are deeply grateful to the donor's family and proud of the seamless teamwork between medical and civic authorities.”
The heart was matched and allocated by NOTTO before being successfully transplanted at Fortis Escorts.
In January this year, similar green corridors were set up in Madhya Pradesh to transport human organs from Jabalpur to Indore and Bhopal, underscoring the growing coordination between medical institutions and traffic police in facilitating critical transplants.
(With ANI inputs)
