Surgeon salutes brain-dead man whose organs saved 6 lives

Tales of donating organs and making green corridors to transfer them quickly and safely are not uncommon nowadays, thanks to the progress in technology and communication. Yet, each of those stories has a component of compassion that makes it special. Isaac George's case is no exception.

The 33-year-old restaurant owner from Kollam, Kerala, was declared brain dead by doctors four days after he got hit by a speeding motorcycle in front of his eatery on the evening of September 6. While his loved ones were shattered, they still made a remarkable decision — donating Isaac’s organs to save others so that parts of him continued to live on in others. Among the organs that were donated is his heart.

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Isaac is survived by his wife, Nancy Mariam Sam, and their two-year-old daughter, Amilia Nancy Isaac.

A communist doctor hails his 'comrade'

For Dr Jo Joseph, the episode was particularly heart-touching. The Kochi-based cardiac surgeon-turned-Communist Party of India (Marxist) member, who played a key role in retrieving Isaac’s heart, saw things not just clinically but as one that spoke about humanity, politics, and a government’s responsibility to stand by its people in their hours of need. Jo Joseph was the Left candidate in the 2022 Thrikkakara bypoll, in which he lost.

Isaac was also referred to as a comrade by the doctor-politician since the former often played a part in Left programmes held locally.

Because today, every single minute carried the value of a life. More than as a doctor, today I felt the greatest joy as a human being. It was also a day when I felt proud of my government and reaffirmed my faith in our system.

“When I saw Isaac George in the operating theatre at KIMS, my heart shuddered. Outwardly, there were no major visible injuries. But in the accident, his brain had been rendered completely non-functional. At the prime of life, while chasing beautiful dreams, an unexpected tragedy had struck him down. And yet, his family showed the supreme grace of donating Isaac’s organs to save the lives of others. Words cannot do justice to the gratitude owed to that noble act. Each moment of retrieving the heart, kidneys, and liver was heartrending,” Dr Joseph said on his Facebook page after a marathon 18-hour effort that took him from Ernakulam to Thiruvananthapuram and back to transport the heart for transplantation.

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“To stand in the midst of their life’s greatest tragedy, yet to find the will to let their son’s, their brother’s organs live on in others, it must have been Isaac George’s own belief system that gave them that strength.”

State administration chips in

The story spiralled beyond Kollam in no time. It drew in Kerala’s health system, police, and aviation wings. Helicopters were scrambled, traffic was halted, and green corridors were mapped out. The entire mission was coordinated by the Kerala State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization.

Isaac’s heart was flown to Lisie Hospital in Ernakulam for 28-year-old Ajeen Elias, a resident of Angamaly. His liver and one kidney remained at KIMS, while another kidney went to the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram. His corneas were received at the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, also in Thiruvananthapuram. By nightfall on September 10, when Isaac was pronounced brain dead, six lives had been transformed because one family chose hope in the midst of despair.

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“Perhaps I was among those who travelled the fastest and farthest today. It felt like a race against time itself. At 2 a.m., I left Ernakulam and reached KIMS Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, by 6:30 in the morning. With the heart, I left around noon, and within just seven minutes, reached the airport from KIMS. By helicopter, in just 45 minutes, I was back in Ernakulam, and from the helipad at Hyatt Hotel, I reached Lisie Hospital in barely five minutes,” Dr Joseph narrated his experience on his social media page.

“Because today, every single minute carried the value of a life. More than as a doctor, today I felt the greatest joy as a human being. It was also a day when I felt proud of my government and reaffirmed my faith in our system.”

State's moment of redemption

For Kerala’s Left government, the transplant was not just a medical achievement. It became proof of its much-touted “system”, the machinery of governance that had been under fire after a string of mishaps in public hospitals in recent times. This was also its moment of redemption.

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Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s office, Health Minister Veena George, Industries Minister P Rajeev, and senior IAS and IPS officers were on the line through the night.

From the green corridor in Thiruvananthapuram to the helipad at Kochi’s Hyatt and finally to Lisie Hospital, every step bore the stamp of state intervention. For once, the headlines were not about delays or bureaucratic hurdles but about efficiency and compassion.

Holding donor's heart close

For Dr Joseph, the experience was deeply personal. He carried Isaac’s heart in a cooler pressed close to his chest as the helicopter cut across the sky.

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In his post, he admitted that the act of carrying it was symbolic, a way of honouring both the organ and the man who had given it. The language he chose was not that of a surgeon detailing a case but of a comrade remembering another comrade.

When the doctor signed off his long post with the oft-recited communist slogan, “Comrade Isaac has not died. He lives on through many others,” it was not just rhetoric.

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It was an invocation of a political vocabulary, one that sees human lives and human generosity as part of a larger struggle for dignity and solidarity. In the heart that beats in another chest in Kochi, in the kidneys that filter blood in Thiruvananthapuram, in the eyes that may now see the world afresh, Isaac George’s worldview finds a strange afterlife.

As his family grieves, the government celebrates the success of a complex mission, and six patients step back into life, one fact remains clear. Isaac’s story is not only about organ donation. It is about the way private sorrow, public systems, and political ideals intersected in Kerala on a single September day.