Rare lung transplant at Apollo saves a life; spotlight on India’s organ donor shortage
New Delhi, A year ago, every breath felt borrowed, drawing life from the tethered oxygen cylinder she had to carry everywhere. Rare lung transplant at Apollo saves a life; spotlight on India’s organ donor shortage Today, Jharna Bhaumik climbs a flight of stairs on her own without breaking a sweat. The cylinder has disappeared from her life. A year after a rare double lung transplant gave her a second lease of life, the Faridabad resident spends her mornings tending to plants, taking unhurried walks and working in the kitchen ordinary moments that had once seemed impossibly out of reach as a crippling lung disease slowly stole her ability to breathe. Diagnosed with end-stage Interstitial Lung Disease caused by scleroderma in 2010, Bhaumik had reached a point where even speaking for long or walking across a room left her gasping for breath. Scleroderma is a rare disease where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks its own tissues, causing damage to internal organs. “Every breath had become a struggle and by 2025 I had become completely dependent …
