After his love, football; his passion, music; ayurveda, homoeopathy, and the yogic prescriptions of Swami Ramdev failed to awaken Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, his family has now put its faith in stem cell treatment.

The 62-year-old former Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, who has been unable to speak or recognise anyone for over a year now, was flown to Germany in the early hours Saturday. The advice to try stem cell treatment came from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Dasmunsi’s wife Deepa told The Indian Express.

Dasmunsi was taken by a commercial airliner to Frankfurt by Deepa, now Congress MP from Raiganj, Dasmunsi’s brother Asim Ranjan Dasmunsi, and some close aides. From Frankfurt, he was driven to the XCell-Center, an institute for stem cell transplantation, at Dussseldorf, some 200 km away. A team of doctors led by Dr Ben Pfiffer will start treatment on Dasmunsi from Monday.

Dasmunshi was paralysed after suffering a massive stroke in October last year. He was admitted to AIIMS and later to Apollo Hospital. He remained on life support, and was diagnosed with a complete failure of the left ventricular system, which resulted in a swelling of the lungs. The result was a reduction of oxygen supply to parts of the body, known as hypoxia, the main complication in such cases.

Dasmunshi did show some signs of improvement after a few months, moving his limbs and pupils, but did not progress further. Doctors said he was suffering from “post arrest anoxic encephalopathy”, a condition in which the brain suffers damage after cardiac arrest.

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