How one doctor's kidney donation changed lives

For nearly 10 years, Dr Thankam S. carried a determination that many around her struggled to understand. She was healthy, professionally accomplished, a mother of two and had no personal connection to kidney disease. Yet she remained steadfast in one unusual goal—she wanted to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger in need. And, she wanted to do this not after her death but while she was alive.

The foetal medicine specialist with Manipal hospital in Bengaluru had first pledged her organs for donation in 2014, carrying a donor card wherever she went. But over time, conversations with colleagues and awareness campaigns left her troubled by one reality—very few posthumous pledges actually translate into successful organ donations.

“There are so many circumstances that can prevent donation after death—the place of death, delays, family availability, medical conditions,” says Thankam. “I realised that even if I had signed everything, the final control was still with circumstances. I didn’t want that. I wanted to donate while I could make that decision myself.”

So she chose to become a living donor. But not much to her surprise, what followed was not admiration or applause, but resistance, first at home, then within the medical system and finally through a maze of legal and bureaucratic hurdles that would stretch for years.

“What crazy idea is this?” said her family when Thankam first shared her decision with them around 2016. “Nobody agreed,” she recalls. “Not my spouse, not my children, not my father, not my brother.”

Her teenage son and daughter, who was in her early twenties then, pleaded with her to remain only a posthumous donor. Her husband met transplant specialists and attended counselling sessions that explained that living kidney donation is medically safe for healthy individuals. Still, the family remained unconvinced.

But Thankam was unmoved. As a doctor, she knew what the surgery involved. She had seen countless people donate kidneys to relatives and go on to lead healthy lives. To her, the fear surrounding living donation was rooted more in public perception than medical reality.

Her family, despite their reluctance, knew that once Thankam committed to something, she rarely backed down. For, she had volunteered for Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin trial during the pandemic, insisted on working in Covid clinics wearing PPE kits during India’s devastating second wave, and later travelled to Yemen and Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, treating women in conflict zones. “I am not the conventional Indian housewife type,” she says, laughing. “I want to help. I want to be where I am needed.”

Long before her kidney donation journey began, Thankam had been drawn towards humanitarian medicine. As a teenager, she remembered reading about doctors flying into remote regions to restore eyesight to poor patients through cataract surgeries. The image stayed with her for decades.

Though marriage, work and family life delayed those ambitions, the desire never disappeared. Then came the Ukraine war. In 2022, television images of a pregnant woman being carried out of a bombed maternity hospital in Kyiv shook her deeply. Days later, news reports said the woman and her unborn child had died. “That was the moment I told myself, ‘Enough procrastination, the world needs doctors,’” says Thankam.

Within a week, she applied to Doctors Without Borders. To qualify, Thankam retrained in obstetrics after years in foetal medicine, working again in labour rooms alongside doctors much younger than her. Soon after, she was deployed to Yemen for three months, followed by another mission in Afghanistan.

But even while serving in war-torn nations, her unresolved dream of kidney donation continued to follow her. Living kidney donations in India are typically permitted among close relatives. Donations to unrelated recipients undergo intense scrutiny to prevent illegal organ trade. Thankam’s proposal of wanting to donate to a stranger purely for altruistic reasons had almost no precedent in Karnataka.

The process became exhausting. Thankam collected documents, underwent psychological evaluations and repeatedly approached hospital committees. Eventually, in 2023, a possible recipient was identified—a 24-year-old orphan suffering from renal failure and surviving on dialysis with limited support. “For me, it felt perfect,” says Thankam. “If this young boy got a kidney, he could rebuild his whole life.” The case finally went before the authorisation committee.

Thankam still remembers that meeting vividly, the questioning, the scrutiny, the interviews with her husband, father and brother, all of whom admitted they were not in favour of the donation. But the donation soon got rejected.

“The reason they gave was devastating,” says Thankam. “They said they could not establish a relationship between the donor and the recipient. Of course, there wasn’t any. That was the whole point.”

Months later, Thankam learned that the young man had died. “That changed something in me,” she says quietly. “I kept thinking if I had fought harder, maybe he would still be alive.”

For over a year after the rejection, Thankam withdrew emotionally from the process. But she never truly gave up. By late 2024, she went back to her mentors and transplant specialists, asking what more could be done. This time, the answer was to approach the court.

A legal petition was filed on her behalf, challenging the rejection. Thankam knew it would not be easy. By then she was nearing 60 and worried that age-related illnesses could eventually make her medically ineligible. “I felt I was fighting against time,” she says. “Because diabetes runs deep on both sides of the family and so I had to really keep my health good if this had to happen and I had already lost more than a decade just trying to donate.”

When the matter finally reached court, Thankam attended the hearing. The judge reviewed her medical clearances, psychiatric evaluations and years-long efforts to secure permission. According to Thankam, the court appeared deeply disturbed that a medically fit donor willing to save a life had been denied permission solely because the recipient was unrelated.

In December 2025, the court directed the hospital authorisation committee to identify suitable recipients from the cadaver transplant waiting list and complete the process within a strict timeline. “That was the first moment I truly felt joy,” says Thankam.

Though she had once hoped to donate to someone young like the orphaned patient she had lost, Thankam ultimately accepted that she could not choose who received her kidney. “The order clearly said the donor cannot select the recipient,” she says. “And I realised that true altruism means giving without conditions.”

Eventually, a 56-year-old woman was identified as a suitable match and the transplant went ahead successfully earlier this year. Three months into recovery now, Thankam says she feels physically well and emotionally fulfilled. “My long-held dream has finally been completed,” she says. “But this is not just about one kidney donation. I want people, especially the young, to understand that living kidney donation is safe and can save lives.” For her, the journey was never about heroism. It was about agency, persistence and a refusal to let bureaucracy decide for her.

“What is extraordinary is that she wanted to donate to someone she did not know at all, purely out of compassion,” says Dr H. Sudershan Ballal, chairman, Manipal Hospitals. “As far as I know, this is the first case in Karnataka where a doctor has donated a kidney to a complete stranger. The government can consider modifying the rules so that genuinely altruistic donations become less complicated, while still preventing misuse because the shortage of kidneys in India is enormous. We require more than one lakh kidneys every year, but we get only a fraction of that number. Many patients spend years on waiting lists. Tragically, a large number die before a suitable kidney becomes available.”

Surekha U., who received the kidney donated by Thankam, knows what it means to wait. For nearly a decade, she and her family lived through a slow, exhausting decline that began almost accidentally in 2016. What was supposed to be a routine uterus removal surgery revealed a far more serious problem when pre-operative blood tests showed elevated creatinine levels, an early sign of kidney dysfunction. Though the surgery eventually went ahead after temporary stabilisation, her condition steadily worsened over the years despite oral medication and treatment in Chennai.

By the time the pandemic ended, Surekha’s creatinine levels had risen to 6mg/dL (normal range for women is 0.6 to 1.1mg/dL). In June 2022, after consulting nephrologists in Bengaluru, she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and told that medicines would no longer be enough. Dialysis began soon after, initially twice a week, then thrice. The physical toll was severe. Her appetite disappeared, her weight dropped to barely 44kg, and prolonged dialysis left her weak, malnourished and plagued by constant itching.

“She would feel okay a day after the dialysis, but the next two days were extremely difficult,” recalls Surekha’s son Bharath, an IT professional in Bengaluru. “We had to force her to eat. Sometimes I mixed protein powders just so her body would absorb something.”

The family registered for cadaver transplantation through the Jeevasarthakathe programme and waited anxiously for years. In September 2025, they finally received a call saying Surekha had reached the priority list, only for the opportunity to collapse when she developed an infection and landed in the ICU the very same day. Months later, came another unexpected call, this time involving an altruistic donor. The family was told that three recipients had been shortlisted for cross-matching, but they had no idea who the donor was.

Even then, uncertainty persisted because another patient ranked ahead of her was initially considered. Only after that candidate failed to receive medical clearance, did the chance come to her.

Just weeks after the transplant, the changes are already visible. Surekha’s complexion has improved, her appetite has returned, and she has put on weight. “Earlier we had to force her to eat,” says Bharath. “Now she asks for food on her own every two hours.”

For the family, the surgery was not just a medical procedure but a second chance at life made possible by the compassion of a stranger.

“The first authorisation committee meeting when I was denied permission, I literally begged them,” recalls Thankam. “They thought I would give up and not bother them any more. But I knew I was not doing anything wrong. Just because they couldn't plug the loopholes within the system and contain the scams, I should not have to go back on my altruistic goals.”