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Bright future, then Azaryna’s world crumbled

KUALA LUMPUR: She is a JPA scholar who graduated with first-class honours and recently completed her Masters degree in microelectronics and microsystems. But now, doctors are telling her that she only has six months to live.

Azaryna Noh, 26, is suffering from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (ILP) and urgently needs a lung transplant.

She was diagnosed with the chronic disease after she complained of a bad cough and had difficulty breathing early this year.

Now, she is fully dependent on an oxygen tank to keep her alive.

“I was offered a job as a vision integration engineer but was diagnosed with the disease at the same time,” she said.

Still, she still went to work although she lasted just a week as she became too weak. She is now wheelchair-bound and her only hope is for someone to step forward as an organ donor to save her life.

Azaryna is one of the nine critically-ill patients at the National Heart Institute (IJN) who urgently need lung or heart transplants.

“We have the facilities and expertise required to save them yet we are helpless because we don’t have organ donors,” said IJN consultant cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Abdul Rais Sanusi.

“There were many cases whereby the deceased had requested for his organs to be donated but in the end, the family did not allow it,” he said.

Every month, he said, there was an increase of about two or three patients to the list of people who were awaiting organ donation.

Suffering a similar fate as Azaryna is Vijaya Ramasamy, 32, who in the final stage of her lung disease.

She was diagnosed with Interstitial lung disease (ILD) only four months after her wedding to mechanic K. Shankar, 33, who has been bearing the medical costs.

Vijaya has been fully dependent on an oxygen tank since March last year and has been living with the hope that a donor would step forward before it is too late.

Her husband Shankar pleaded for help.

“Please don’t waste your organs. Please donate, not just for my wife but for these other patients who need your help,” he said.