Kidney donor repatriated urgently for son’s medical emergency

TDT | Manama

An Indian father residing in the Kingdom flew home on Monday as part of a “Vande Bharat” repatriation flight to be an organ donor for his son, who suffers from Nephrotic Syndrome, a critical kidney disorder. The father was a last-minute addition to a list of 177 passengers for the Air India Express flight to Kochi, which was part of the second phase of the Indian government’s mission to bring back nationals stranded abroad due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

The son, 19, needs an urgent kidney transplant and his father intends to donate his own. After the necessary medical protocols are followed, he can be matched as a suitable organ-donor. Nephrotic Syndrome is a kidney disorder that causes the body to pass too much protein in the urine.

It is usually caused by damage to the clusters of small blood vessels in a person’s kidneys that filter waste and excess water from their blood. The symptoms, together, show that the kidneys are not working as well as they should.

The father arrived safely in Kochi and plans to travel onwards today to his city of residence in Pune to join his son, after following all the medical clearance protocols to ensure that he is free of COVID-19. Owing to a coordinated effort by the Indian Embassy, World Non-Resident Indian Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Health, the father was allowed to travel in the flight, in a last-minute decision, taken under special consideration of his son’s current medical condition.

Meanwhile, another repatriation flight that departed yesterday for Kozhikode marked the last of Phase Two in the “Vande Bharat Mission”. Around 1,700 Indian expatriates have so far been flown back to India since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of whom have left for urgent reasons like in the case of the father.