New Delhi :  The Malek family from Yemen had lost all hope when nine-year-old Abdul was diagnosed with the same liver disease that had killed his two siblings. But the boy has got a new lease of life after doctors from the national capital region did a complicated liver surgery on him, transplanting a portion of his father s liver into his.

"Abdul was diagnosed with a liver disease that was followed by jaundice and an enlarged liver. The disease begins in infancy. So many children are not able to receive timely liver transplant due to lack of awareness," Vivek Vij, head of department of liver transplant in Fortis Hospital in Noida, said Friday.

Abdul was diagnosed with progressive familial intraheptic cholestasis which, doctors say, progresses to cirrhosis within the first decade of life. "We had already lost Abdul s four-year-old brother and a two-year-old sister to the same disease," the boy s uncle Hasan Abdo Hasan Surain said.

The surgery, held June 15, cost the family over Rs.15 lakh with medication for the first three months. Abdul was discharged after two weeks of the surgery.

"Liver transplantation is an established treatment for children with end-stage liver diseases with good long term survival," said Rajeev Tomar, a consultant paediatric hematologist at Fortis Hospital. In the over 10-hour long surgery, the team of doctors met the challenging task of operating on Abdul s small blood vessels. So far, he has not had any complaints of jaundice and itching.