7-year-old boy in Hanoi donates cornea: 'I'll give light to someone else'
“Give your light to someone else!”, the mother said and placed a kiss on the forehead of her 7-year-old daughter who was sleeping like an angel.
Mr. Nguyen Huu Hoang, Director of the Eye Bank, Eye Hospital, shared that he and his colleagues had just witnessed the extremely emotional moment of cornea donation of a 7-year-old girl in Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi.
The girl just turned 7 three months old but was diagnosed with astrocytic neuroblastoma in September 2017. The family has been trying to treat her for many months at K Hospital, but yesterday afternoon, when she saw that her daughter was unlikely to survive, her mother called the National Coordination Center for Human Organ Transplantation to ask to donate her child's organs to save others when she passed away.
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| A cornea is removed from a donor. Illustration photo |
The call brought the entire Coordination Center to a halt during lunch. However, the law only accepts organ donations from people 18 years of age or older, so despite the hope for more miracles, the center could only accept the child's cornea.
Mr. Hoang said that yesterday afternoon, he, a doctor from the Eye Bank, and two officers from the Coordination Center went to the child's house to get the cornea.
Before starting, the mother looked at her daughter affectionately and said: "Give your light to someone else!" then placed a kiss on her forehead.
“That image made my nose sting. The little girl lay there like a sleeping angel. We started the work as gently and carefully as possible, as if afraid of disturbing her good sleep,” Dr. Hoang emotionally shared.
After 30 minutes, the cornea removal surgery was completed. The mother looked at her daughter one more time and lovingly said: "I'm proud of you!"
Mr. Hoang shared that in more than 10 years of working, he has never been so emotional. This is also the first time he has done something he has never done before but feels satisfied.
Mr. Hoang said that the girl's two corneas have been stored at the Eye Bank. Unlike other organs that need to be compatible with the donor in many ways, corneal transplants are easier. With young people's corneas, the younger the transplant, the better.
According to Mr. Hoang, in Vietnam, the youngest cornea donor was 6 years old.
