MAHAN camp brings a lease of life to Melghat villagers

NAGPUR: One and half year old Reshma from Toranvadi village in tribal belt of Melghat was malnourished like many other children of the area. She was born with cleft lip and cleft palate and this increased the severity of her malnutrition. She weighed just 5kg and would have died unless operated upon for these problems. Correcting this birth defect only could have increased her food input and her weight.
Luckily, she got a lifeline at annual surgical camp of MAHAN trust and Kasturba Health Society run by Dr Ashish Satav. This year was seventh for the camp. Reshma was one of the 101 patients operated upon in Mahatma Gandhi Tribal Hospital at Karamgram (Utavali) in Chikhaldara block of Amravati district where Dr Satav and his wife Kavita have been working for prevention and control of malnutrition for past many years.
Two plastic surgeons who have been coming to the camp for the past five years from Australia took the risk of operating upon her knowing she might not survive the operation. They were Dr Dilip Gahankari, a product of Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) Nagpur and who originally belongs to to Ballarshah, and Dr Kevin Haung. “Dr Gahankari said Reshma would otherwise also die due to severe malnutrition as she could hardly eat anything due to her cleft lip and palate problem. Now Reshma, whose parents are already dead, is gaining wait gradually from our ‘ready to eat’ protein rich food packets,” Dr Satav told TOI.
When Reshma’s grandmother brought her to the screening camp the old lady was crying fearing for little girl’s life. She continues to cry even now but this time it is tears of joy.
The annual camp mainly draws a lot of burn patients, a majority of them children, who get burns while asleep in winters. They generally sleep near chullah or any fire lit the entire night nights in Melghat can be freezing. They get burnt by chance accidentally turning towards fire in their sleep. These people live with the deformities (post burn contractures) caused by burns throughout their life. It is only from past seven years in Dharni block and neighbouring areas of Madhya Pradesh like Betul, Khandwa, Burhanpur that some patients of such old burns have received surgery.
Dr Kavita Satav said it was passion for treating the needy and the poor that brought Dr Gahankari, Dr Haung and other doctors from Nagpur, Amravati, Sewagram to the camp where they gave their services free. Herself an eye surgeon, she has been helping her husband treat malnutrition in about 300 villages of Melghat and 100 villages of MP. “We had a patient with his neck attached to chest due to burns for over a decade. It is awareness and faith in the doctors over the years that we get so many patients. They have no money for surgery in private hospitals,” she said.
CAMP OF HOPE
* Many patients have suffered burns and require plastic surgery
* In last seven years 565 patients have been treated in the camp
* This orthopaedic surgeries, oral cancers, breast cancer cases were also operated
* Removing tumours form another big chunk surgeries
* Patients were selected in three screening camps
* Of 101 surgeries this year, 25 were burns, 35 tumours and 5 of cleft lip. Remaining had various other problems