Renal Transplant Centre at PGI Chandigarh gets anonymous donation worth Rs 10 crore

Chandigarh: An anonymous person is reported to have made a donation of Rs 10 crore to the Renal Transplant Centre of Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) for kidney failure patients who were unable to afford it. 

According to a hospital official, the donor was connected with PGIMER and had donated his savings to the centre while choosing to remain anonymous. It has been reported that one of the patients who had undergone renal transplantation out of the 24 transplants done in August was a relative of the donor. 

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The institute has not shared any official information about it, but sources stated that the donor had sent a cheque in the name of the Renal Transplant Centre. The hospital is yet to decide how to utilise the funds. 

The ETV Bharat reports that the donor was reported to be a doctor who had worked as the HOD of a department at PGI, and whose niece had allegedly undergone the transplant at the centre. Nearly 450 patients would be benefitted from the amount donated by the doctor. 

It is one of the highest donations received by PGIMER; the last highest donation reported was Rs 50 lakh. Over the past 3 years, nearly Over 9,000 patients have been treated through the hospital's Poor Patients Welfare Fund. Stating that the minimum cost of a renal transplant was Rs 40,000 and it could go as high as Rs 2 lakh in case of complications, Centre's head Dr Ashish Sharma told the Hindustan Times, "The cost further increases to ₹6 lakh if the blood group is incompatible."

In addition to the said costs, the patients are required to take medicines costing from Rs 1200 to Rs 15000 every month throughout. The transplant is in itself not an easy affair with nearly 2,600 kidney failure patients currently in the queue for a donor. The patient with a donor has to wait at least a month or two for the transplant. A doctor noted that people waiting for transplants sometimes save up from their jobs outside their treatment to support their treatment. 

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