Dinesh Sanghani and Munshi Mansoori are the first beneficiaries of Apex Swap Transplant Registry (ASTR), a kind of matchmaking service for kidney failure patients that hinges on organ exchange.
It was a long, anxious wait, but Dinesh Sanghani, 41, and Munshi Mansoori, 34, are happy to have found each other.
Sanghani and Mansoori are the first beneficiaries of Apex Swap Transplant Registry (ASTR), a kind of matchmaking service for kidney failure patients that hinges on organ exchange. The ASTR is a database of patients searching for kidney donors matching their blood type and Sanghani and Mansoori are the first couple of the ‘paired donation’ initiative.
Sanghani, 41, and Mansoori, 34, both businessmen, needed a pair of kidneys each after theirs stopped working. So they became just the kind of ‘kidney couples’ whose needs the ASTR seeks to address.
Here’s how it works and everything, of course, hinges on compatible blood grouping. Dinesh’s blood group is B positive, but doctors could not consider giving him wife Dimple’s kidney as she is A positive. So, the ASTR helped the Sanghanis locate the Mansooris so that Dimple can donate her kidney to Munshi Mansoori and Munshi’s wife Razia can give Dinesh one of hers.
A simple swap, made possible because of compatible blood types.
Now that the Sanghanis and Mansooris have found each other via the ASTR register, they are ready to undergo the complex kidney swap. All that is left to do before the surgery is some paper work, which may take a month.
On December 30, 2010, DNA became the first to report how the ASTR will help kidney failure patients. The national registry database was set up in response to the needs of patients frustrated with mismatched blood types that often delayed kidney transplants.
The ASTR, that contains details of kidney patients and their relatives, was set up and is managed by the Apex Kidney Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation. After DNA reported the setting up of the registry, 50 patients registered their names. The ASTR makes matches between people who will give away one kidney if their relative gets one in return.
The Zonal Transplant Co-ordination Committee too keeps a registry of people wanting kidneys, but the ASTR somehow makes the task of locating donors easier.
Within days of its opening, the ASTR has built a database of scores of families with kidney patients. “Our objective is to see that a robust organ distribution system evolves for such paired exchanges. The ASTR office is at Shushrut Hospital in Chembur and any patient and his relative can register their names to find matching donors,” said Dr Vishwanth Billa, coordinator, ASTR and senior nephrologist, Bombay hospital.
“Paired organ donation is a completely legal procedure. The ASTR will also stop people from considering illegal transplants from unknown donors, prevent organ trade and the stigma previously attached to India,” said Dr Jatin Kothari, consultant nephrologist at Hinduja Hospital and joint secretary, ZTCC.
For two years, Dinesh Sanghani had been undergoing dialysis and the family had been desperately sending up prayers to God for a kidney donor with a matching blood group to turn up. “Even when I was ready to donate my kidney, we could not do anything. Finally we found a donor through the registry. It is a ray of hope for kidney patients,” said his wife Dimple.
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