In 2013, Kanmani Kannan, a native of Pachaperumalpatti village in the Tiruchirappalli district of Tamil Nadu, signed up as a stem cell donor during a medical camp in Kerala. Once the camp ended, she kept the registration card close to her at all times in the hope that someday she would be chosen to save someone’s life.
Interestingly, the call came four years later and that too, two days before her graduation ceremony. However, nothing was to stop Dr Kanmani, who was more than glad that her stem cells would provide a person with a new lease of life. This deed also led to her becoming the first woman stem cell donor in Kerala.
As is the protocol followed in such scenarios, the identity of the recipient was kept under wraps.
The mystery was finally revealed at a programme jointly organised by the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Datri Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry in Kochi on Thursday, giving Dr Kanmani the opportunity to meet the recipient.
The beneficiary of Dr Kanmani’s selfless act was Sreemali Balasuriya, a 6-year-old from Sri Lanka, who was diagnosed with thalassemia when she was only two months old and would undergo a blood transfusion every 14 days.
Sreemali’s father, Jayanth, was running from hospital to hospital before he zeroed in on one in Bengaluru to provide his daughter with the best treatment available.
This was an emotional meeting for both Kanmani and the Balasuriya family. In fact, when she was speaking about her experience—right from registering for the programme to finally meeting her ‘blood baby’—Kanmani was at a loss for words.