Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh passes away

Chennai - 14 Aug 2012 (PTI):Union ministerand former Maharashtra chief ministerVilasrao Deshmukh, who has been battling liver cancer in a city hospital, died here on Tuesday afternoon. He was 67.

Having registered with the Tamil Nadu organ registry for a liver and a kidney, Vilasrao's case was cleared as a 'super ultra emergency'. He was to receive the organs from a 31-year-old man who was declared brain dead at the Government General Hospital, Chennai on Monday afternoon, but the prospective donor suffered a cardiac arrest in the early hours of Tuesday before his organs could be harvested.

Two more set of organs were available by Tuesday morning, one from Chennai GH, where a 20-year-old woman was declared brain dead, and another from Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai. But transplant surgeons at Global Hospitals found Vilasrao's condition was too unstable to undergo the procedure.

"His condition was getting worse from early morning," said a treating doctor. "Though a transplant was the only option, the chances of his surviving the long and complex procedure looked bleak."