Rural Surgery In India

Excerpt

The year was 1980. I got a call from a young surgeon (not that I was old then) who had started practice a year back in a village 240 km from Mumbai. He wanted me to perform a Heller’s cardiomyotomy in a 24-year-old woman with achalasia. “Can you not send her to Bombay?”—it was still known as Bombay, not Mumbai then—I asked. He gave irrefutable reasons for the need to operate on the patient in the village: The patient obviously could not travel alone to the city; she would need a person to accompany her. Her admission to the “free” city hospital could be managed immediately, but where would her companion stay? They would have to spend double the amount for travel to Mumbai. Staying in a hotel would be beyond their reach. In our hospital, no routine surgery is done unless the patient is accompanied by a relative. …