Medical milestone

Little Jasmine Mirza’s successful kidney implant is the stuff of medical history. Her story has been told and retold in a number of newpapers and websites in the United Kingdom.

The five-year-old who started schooling this January at the North Farnborough Infant School has had a chequered life. When her liver mysteriously began to fail, she had to be operated on when barely a year old to receive a transplant donated by her father Sohrab. Unwilling to wait for a donor liver, Sohrab, who works for a financial services firm, donated 30 percent of his own for transplantation in the infant at London’s King’s College, where it successfully grew into a full working organ. Sohrab’s liver too is said to have regenerated.

Cathie Locke, Sohrab Mirza and Jasmine

But the cocktail of drugs Jasmine was administered, to prevent her system from rejecting the transplant, was found to have damaged her kidneys. The father was willing to provide one of his own but it was not a suitable match. Her mother Cathie Locke’s kidney was found to be more suitable and was accordingly transplanted in Jasmine. The procedure last October involved transportation between two hospitals — Guy’s Hospital where Locke’s kidney was removed and St Thomas’ Hospital where Jasmine was being treated. It took three hours to remove Locke’s kidney and 10 hours to place it in Jasmine, notes the article in Mail Online. It was a risky venture that paid off.

The child is assessed to have spent a fourth of her life in hospital being taken for dialysis four times a week.

"Jasmine’s recovery is all credit to the NHS (National Health Service),” the Mail quotes Sohrab. "We all complain when (we) have to go to accident and emergency and wait for hours. We’ve done it ourselves. But when you are on a hospital ward in a specialist hospital, what they do is amazing.” Added Locke, "Jasmine is getting there, but on the emotional side our lives have been on hold for such a long time. Now we are looking forward to getting back to normality.”

"The NHS Blood and Transplant Agency confirmed that is was the first recorded case of a child in this country receiving organs from both parents,” writes Matthew Moore in The Daily Telegraph.

"She is more part of us now than she ever would have been,” Sohrab is quoted by the journals. "As a parent, you would always say you would give an arm and a leg to help your children. It is amazing that we have been able to do that.”