Four donors give life to 16 patients in two days

Hana Haviv had said before her death that she favored organ transplants.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
organ transplant 88 (photo credit: )
organ transplant 88
(photo credit: )
The lives of 16 people were saved by transplants of organs from four people during the past two days, including those from the Kfar Saba girl who died suddenly from a virulent meningococcal meningitis infection and the 19-year-old soldier accidentally killed by a stray bullet. Israel Transplant said on Thursday that the transplants were performed at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem; Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer; Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center; Schneider Children's Medical Center in Petah Tikva; and the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. The observant family of Hana Haviv, the pupil at Harel Ulpana who developed meningitis, agreed to donate her liver and other organs because she had said lately that she favored organ transplants. Her donated organs posed no danger to the recipients, said doctors, because she had received high doses of antibiotics in the fruitless efforts to save her. Her liver went to a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who suffered from a congenital defect. He is recovering and was declared stable soon after the surgery at Schneider. The heart of Yaniv Pozoarik of Holon, who was killed by a stray bullet from the gun of his fellow soldier while he was cleaning the weapon, was transplanted into the body of Salim Loei of Ibilin, 25, who had been waiting for a heart for four months while being connected to an artificial heart and equipment in a suitcase. "Yaniv would have told me 'Congratulations, Dad‚ [on your decision to donate it]," said his bereaved father. Loei had prepared himself every day for a possible transplant while living in a hospital for the past three months. The other donors were a 66-year-old woman who had a stroke who died at Hillel Yaffe and a 59-year-old woman who died of a stroke at Sourasky. The donor organs were removed at Sourasky, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.