Nine-month-old Kavya Raut became the youngest patient to undergo a liver transplant in the western region after his mother, Nisha, donated 20 per cent of her liver. Doctors had to further cut the tissue to size for the severely underweight baby and transplant it. Born in Gholwad village, Palghar, the infant was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a childhood disease of the liver in which one or more bile ducts are narrow, blocked or absent. Because of this condition, he stopped growing at 5.6 kg.

“Since birth, he was passing white stool, and his navel got infected. He once underwent emergency surgery at a private hospital in Mumbai. But it was not successful and led to irreversible damage, cirrhosis,” Nisha recalled.Kavya developed deep jaundice and fluid in his belly. His father, a worker at an idol-making centre, spent all his savings on the child's treatment. Later, his parents brought him to Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai Central, where the doctors pulled off the complex surgery.