100 free reconstructive surgeries by a team of top surgeons to coincide with International Women’s Day
Project Revive is an ambitious project that aims to carry out reconstructive plastic surgery on 100 chosen patients in the span of two weeks between 28 February and 12 March, 2016. The patients will be women and children, identified from underprivileged sections, and the surgery will help them get the treatment they badly need and will also enable them to lead normal lives. Patients with both congenital and acquired medical conditions such as cleft lip and palate as well acid attack and burn victims will be considered. Priority will be given to patients who lack either the financial resources or those who hail from rural areas and thereby lack access to the right treatment.
The surgeries will be carried out at W Pratiksha Hospital, one of India’s largest multi-specialty hospitals for women.
Since the International Woman’s Day on March 8 coincides with the hospital’s first anniversary, the hospital facilities are being provided free of charge for the project. Dr. Biplav Agarwal will be serving as the Project Coordinator. The project is being led by Dr Charles Viva as Lead Surgeon, and his team of members from Interplast UK. “We do what we can to give women back their dignity,” says Dr Charles Viva. Interplast is a registered charity organisation in the UK of like-minded surgeons and clinicians, who undertake annual two-week volunteer projects in countries outside the UK to treat patients who would otherwise go untreated. This is in line with the charity’s dual objective, which is to not only provide relief to the sick, but also to advance education and training to interested medical professionals in their countries of operation. The team has carried out such projects previously in Uganda and Pakistan.
The stakeholders in the project
The other stakeholders in the project are Ritinjali (means “helping hands” in Sanskrit), an NGO with the vision “Giving back to society what we have taken from it”, and AA Dermascience. This project is expected to be the first on this scale in India.
Surgeries will include the following cases:
- Burns and complications thereof.
- Acid attack cases and complications thereof.
- Cleft lip/ palate.
- Contractures, keloids – primary or secondary.
- Candidates for revision surgeries done for any of the above.
In India, there are 28 lakh children and adults with cleft lip and palate issues. They are mostly untreated due to lack of awareness or financial constraints. According to Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, there are lakhs of women who have burn injuries as a result of domestic violence. Delhi, UP, Punjab, Haryana, and Bihar together account for more than 50 per cent of all victims in India. Delhi NCR has the dubious distinction of accounting for highest number of acid attacks in the country.
A scar contracture is the result of a contractile wound-healing process occurring in a scar that has already been adequately healed. Keloids and hypertrophic scars are fibrous tissue outgrowths that result when a wound does not heal normally. A combination of biochemical factors, skin tension, and genetic factors are the likely culprits. All treatment protocols are individualised, but the standard approach to keloids begin with corticosteroid injection followed by surgical excision, pressure dressings, and long-term follow-up.
You can help by sponsoring a patient, referring patients who require the kind of treatment mentioned here, or just by spreading the message.