A Vietnamese military major who passed away succumbing to an on-duty accident had different of his organs donated to six people and saved their lives.

The 45-year-old serviceman was brain dead and died earlier this month after days of lying unconscious on his sickbed in a hospital in Hanoi.

It was his wife who registered him as an organ donor, when he was already in a deep coma, believing that she and their children would continue to ‘see’ their husband and dad when he could save others life after losing his own.

“I don’t know if what I’m going to do is right or wrong, nor will it make you mad at me, but I want you to save the life of others,” the wife recalled telling her husband, before he was taken to the surgery room.

His family were prepared that he would never make it, and all backed the wife’s decision to donate his organs after his death.

The deceased major’s heart and lungs are now beating and breathing inside the chests of two other men, and his kidneys and corneas have also brought life to four others.

“All of the six recipients of the major’s organs are recovering well; they are saved,” doctor Mai Hong Bang, director of the 108 Military Central Hospital, said.

Doctors perform a surgery to transplant lungs from a brain-dead donor to a patient in Hanoi. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The wife of the military man came up with the decision after she learned of an inspiring story from Nguyen Hai An, a moribund young Vietnamese girl with cancer who had allowed her corneas to be given to someone in need before she died in late February.

An was laid to rest on February 24, when the family of the deceased serviceman also phoned the Vietnam National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation to register him as a donor.

The story of the military officer has also become an inspiring miracle, when the operation to transplant his lungs has become the first successful one ever made with a brain-dead donor.

The recipient, 52-year-old Tran Ngoc Hanh, told reporters after his surgery at the 108 hospital on Friday that he was “feeling good now,” with the serviceman’s lungs breathing inside his chest.

Doctors have also had to be in a race against the clock to transport the donated organs to those in need timely.

The heart and lungs of a donor are only in a transplantable state for six hours after being taken out from the body, and the maximum time for the kidneys is 18 hours.

Besides Hanh, the patient that received one of the serviceman’s cornea and the other who got one of his kidney, underwent the transplantation at the 108 hospital.

His heart and the other kidney were transported to Ho Chi Minh City by air to be transplanted to two patients at Cho Ray Hospital.

The other cornea was given to a patient at the Hanoi-based National Hospital of Ophthalmology.