According to K.M. Cherian, chairman and CEO of the hospital, the teenager had been admitted almost a month ago. “He had dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart muscles balloon out and become enlarged and so, cannot pump efficiently,” he said.

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Early on Wednesday morning, when they were alerted that a heart was available in Hyderabad from a patient declared brain dead at a hospital there, a team from Frontier Lifeline flew out to receive it around 5.30 a.m. The donor Vaishnav (12) had been injured in a road accident, along with three other members of his family near Ramoji Film City. He had been admitted to Global Hospital in Hyderabad.

To enable quick and easy transport of the donor heart, Hyderabad police created a green corridor from the hospital to Shamshabad international airport. Officials from state-run organ donation programme Jeevandan said that the donor heart reached Shamshabad in just over 35 minutes.“Our team got back to Chennai at 4.30 p.m. and the heart was brought from the airport to the hospital in less than 20 minutes,” Dr. Cherian said.

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According to an official of the Tamil Nadu cadaver transplant programme, none of the cardiac transplant centres in Chennai had an Indian patient who was a suitable recipient for the heart.“We also asked the Telangana government to check with other neighbouring States including Kerala and Karnataka to make sure there was no Indian patient in the vicinity who could have received it. If no Indian patient is found suitable, then the organ can be given to a foreign national,” he said.

The family lives in Dubai, but is originally from Punjab in Pakistan.By 10:15 p.m., the surgery was completed though the patient remained on support, a doctor said. Vaishnav’s kidneys and liver were also harvested and sent to various hospitals for transplant surgeries.

But the valiant effort to save a Pakistani boy with an end-stage heart condition in a Chennai hospital ended in tragedy as the boy died despite a heart transplant.

“The pressure in his lungs had gone up drastically and even after the transplant, his new heart could not take the stress. It did not have the capacity to function like that of a 10-year-old boy’s heart,” he said. It did not have the power to pump efficiently so it gave way within a few hours, the doctor said.