NEW DELHI: A heart harvested from a 42-year-old man in Mumbai was on Tuesday transported aerially through green corridors to a hospital in Delhi, covering a distance of about 1,100 km in over two-and-a-half hours, officials said. The heart is to be transplanted into a 53-year-old woman and an operation is currently underway, hospital authorities said.

“A green corridor was created between Mumbai and Delhi to carry a heart to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (FEHI), Okhla,” a spokesperson of the hospital said.

The recipient is suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump blood effectively, the hospital said.

A team of doctors led by Z S Meharwal, Director, Cardio Thoracic Vascular Surgery, FEHI, are performing the surgery. “The male donor had suffered serious injuries in a road accident and was declared brain dead at Global Hospital in Mumbai. The heart was then airlifted at 03.15pm from the Mumbai airport and reached the Delhi airport at 05.05pm,” the spokesperson said.

Another green corridor from the Delhi airport to FEHI was then created spanning 23 km in 23 minutes.

“A green corridor was provided from Indira Gandhi International Airport T3 to FEHI. The journey started at 5.07pm and the heart reached the hospital at 5.30pm. The route taken was the IGIA-NH8-RTR-Munirka-Malviya Nagar-Nehru Place-FEHI,” a senior official of the Delhi Traffic said.

Meharwal said a heart transplant is a critical surgery where timing is the key. “It is commendable that a live heart was retrieved and transported within such a short span of time. Such examples of swift coordination gives us immense confidence.