Karnataka doctors sneak into Tamil Nadu on foot at night to save life

BENGALURU: When the clock struck one on Wednesday night, the police personnel posted at the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border witnessed something that left them wondering: a team of four doctors and a patient on a wheelchair crossing the desolate border stretch.

CrPC Section 144 (prohibitory orders) was in force when this liver transplant team from Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru decided to save the life of a 55-year-old diabetic from Nagpur. He had been waiting for a liver for the last two years. This mission was even more remarkable given that the 55-year-old donor's family from Tamil Nadu agreed to grant a new lease of life to a recipient from across the border amidst inter-state violence.

Dr A Olithselvan, consultant hepatologist and chairman of the division of liver transplantation at Manipal Hospital, who was leading the team, told TOI: "It would have been very easy for us to decline the liver offer from Tamil Nadu given the current volatile political situation between the two states. However, we would have been unable to save the recipient's life and we would have disregarded the donor's noble gesture. So we decided to ignore the potential risk to the medical team."

It took them four hours to reach Salem in Tamil Nadu. Dr Olithselvan said: "We pulled the wheelchair off the ambulance (at Karnataka border), put the recipient in it and walked for a kilometre till we crossed the border and reached an ambulance with a Tamil Nadu registration. That half-hour walk seemed never-ending, it felt like crossing the border between two countries."

When the team made it to the hospital, it was 3 am. "It was a 12-hour surgery. The transplant has been successful and the recipient is doing well now," said Dr Olithselvan.