India's first womb transplant a success

Doctors in Pune, India succesfully conducted the country's first womb transplant operation.

The operation was conducted on a 21-year-old woman who was born without a uterus. The donor was her 41-year-old mother.

"The first case always takes time and in the case of this 21-year-old girl who was born without a uterus, we had to recreate the blood supply before fitting the womb that was donated by her 41-year-old mother," Dr Shailesh Puntambekar, whose team performed the tricky operation, told the Indian Express.

The day-long procedure was extremely complicated. It took over four hours to retrieve the uterus from the mother. The mother had decided to donate her uterus as her daughter wasn't born with one. “What is the use of my uterus if it cannot help my daughter?” the mother had told the transplant team.

On the day of the operation, the hospital restricted entry for visitors or relatives of patients. There was a strict refusal to entertain media also. “We are not taking any chances. This is a complicated surgery and the team has been preparing for it for a year now,” Puntambekar, Director of Galaxy Care Hospital, said.



“Our team has perfected the technique and we have practised on human cadavers in Tubungen, Germany, and the USA,” he had told The Indian Express earlier.

Dr Milind Telang, a gynaecologist on the team, said the transplant was a huge achievement in the field of medicine. It is also a significant step towards helping women who cannot conceive due to medical reasons, become mothers.

The story originally appeared on Huffington Post India