Kerry Packer - Failing Health

Failing Health

Packer reportedly suffered as many as eight heart attacks. In 1990, while playing polo at Warwick Farm, Sydney, he suffered a heart attack that left him clinically dead for six minutes. Packer was revived by paramedics and then airlifted to St Vincent's Private Hospital, Sydney and received a bypass surgery from Dr Victor Chang (a pioneering cardiac surgeon). It was not common for an ambulance to have a defibrillator at the time — it was purely by chance that the ambulance which responded to the call had one fitted. After recovering, Packer donated a large sum to the Ambulance Service of New South Wales to pay for equipping all NSW ambulances with a portable defibrillator (now colloquially known as "Packer Whackers"). He told Nick Greiner "I'll go you 50/50", and the NSW State government paid the other half of the cost. In a press conference he later remarked on his temporary oblivion "I’ve been to the other side and let me tell you, son, there’s fucking nothing there...there’s no one waiting there for you, there’s no one to judge you so you can do what you bloody well like".

He also suffered from a chronic kidney condition for many years, and in 2000 he made headlines when his long-serving helicopter pilot, Nick Ross, donated one of his own kidneys to Packer for transplantation.

The transplant was covered in detail by the Australian TV documentary program Australian Story, a rare occasion on which Packer granted a media interview (and, to the surprise of many, not to his own network; Australian Story is produced by the public network, ABC).

After recovering from the operation, Packer launched an organ transplant association in memory of cricketer David Hookes.