BENGALURU: A 34-year-old boiler operator Basavanna Gowda, working in a rice mill in Karnataka’s Bellary district, lost both his hands in an electrical accident a decade ago. He has now got a new pair of hands in a very complex but successful hand-transplant surgery at Kochi’s Amrita Hospital that lasted 14 hours.
The transplanted hands belonged to Nevis Sajan Mathew, a 25-year-old deceased youth hailing from Kottayam district in Kerala who was pursuing Masters in Accounting in France. On a visit to the state on a holiday from France, he suffered from an illness and was declared brain-dead at a hospital in Kochi on September 25, 2021. His parents — Sajan Mathew and Sherin – readily agreed to donate their son’s various organs, including his hands, immediately following his death, and that is when Basavanna’s long wait for a new pair of hands came to an end.
Basavanna suffered a high-tension electrical burn injury in July 2011 at his workplace in Bellary that badly damaged both his hands, turning them lifeless. Following the accident, he was rushed to a hospital in Bellary and later shifted to Bengaluru, where doctors had to amputate both his arms just below the elbow. After despairing for many years, he finally enrolled with the hand-transplantation unit of Amrita Hospital in 2016, praying for a miracle. After a pair of hands were retrieved for transplantation from Nevis Sajan Mathew, the team of surgeons at Amrita hospital rushed Basavanna into the marathon surgery.
