19-year-old girl from Karachi undergoes successful heart transplant in Chennai

A 19-year-old girl from Karachi is reported to have received a successful heart transplant in Chennai.

Ayesha Rashid,19, experienced a cardiac arrest in Karachi in 2019 due to a pre-existing heart condition.

Beyond restrained India-Pakistan ties, she received a new life after she underwent successful heart transplant surgery at Chennai’s MGM Healthcare in late January this year.

Ayesha Rashan was able to receive a donner’s heart and financial support from an NGO and others.

She first travelled to Chennai for a check-up in 2019. After coming back to Pakistan she felt heart pain and had complications so she came back to Chennai again in June 2023.

She was then placed on Tamil Nadu’s organ transplant registry while waiting for a suitable donor.

It came for her as a blessing as with the joint efforts, the heart of a 69-year-old Indian was finally airlifted from Delhi to Chennai and the heart transplant surgery was successfully conducted on January 31.

“This child first came to us in 2019, soon after she came her heart stopped. We had to do CPR and put an artificial heart pump. With that she recovered and went back to Pakistan, then she became sick again, her heart failure worsened and she required repeated hospitalisation in that country (Pakistan), it’s not easy, because the equipment required is not there and they had no money,” said Dr KR Balakrishnan, chairman of Institute of Heart and Lung transplant and Mechanical Circulatory support.

“We are the largest centre doing heart transplants. We are doing almost 100 per year. One of the biggest numbers in the world I would say. And if there are no Indians then, it will be allotted to a foreigner. In this situation, this girl was waiting for almost 10 months. Luckily, she got the heart,” said Dr Suresh Rao, Co-director at the Institute of Heart and Lung Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support.