Aster Hospitals to Extend Helping Hand for Liver Treatment for Children from Financially Backward Families

KOTTAYAM:
As part of supporting children with liver diseases who are hailing from financially weak families, Aster hospitals will ensure world class treatment and liver transplant at a free of cost or at a subsidised rate.

Surgery will be held at Aster Medcity Kochi and Aster MIMS Calicut. Aster DM Foundation, MIMS Charitable Trust, People Helping People (the project of Aster Medcity to provide assistance for transplantation patients), Bollywood actor and humanitarian Sonu Sood and Aster volunteers are also supporting the initiative. Apart from this, support for receiving crowdfunding and special discount will also be made available. Liver transplants are often delayed due to the nonavailability of matching organ donors.

The huge treatment cost leaves the financially backward class not able to get proper treatment. Taking this into consideration, Aster Volunteers formed Liver Care Program which has taken the initiative to find the donors and support the patients. They will provide financial assistance for liver transplant and continuing
treatment. Those who need liver transplant can contact through WhatsApp in 8113078000, 9656000601, 7025767676. Aster Volunteers will select those who are eligible for the treatment.

Aster Hospitals Kerala Cluster and Oman Regional Director Farhan Yasin said that this campaign was started following several families were not able to treat their children due to the high cost for transplantation. A person like Sonu Sood joining with the Liver Care Program helped the Aster Volunteers to make the project a reality. The cooperation of Sonu Sood in creating awareness for organ donation also helped the materialise the project, Farhan Yasin said.

Dr Mathew Jacob Senior consultant Hepato Biliary Surgeon Aster Medcity said that Liver Care Program was started to uphold the principles of Aster to ensure most modern treatment is not denied to anyone. Around 2 lakh people loss their life in India due to liver diseases and around 10 percent of them are children. However in India, there are only 1,500 to 2000 liver transplants being done a year. This is due to the nonavailability of donors and high cost for transplant. He pointed that the efforts of Aster Volunteers is a step towards making a change in promoting organ donation and providing free treatment for the needy.
Aster Hospitals had set up Multi-Organ Transplant Centre with most modern facilities for organ transplantation. The Centre is led by eminent surgeons who are in experienced in Liver, Kidney, Heart, Lungs, Cornea and bone marrow transplants.

The largest paediatric liver transplant in South India is functioning here to ensure proper liver treatment for children. Liver surgery experts, trained coordinators, counsellors, critical care specialists, anaesthetist, interventional radiologists, physiotherapists and a nursing team is functioning at the Multi-Organ Transplant
Centre. Around 500 liver transplants have been completed at this Centre.