Stanford Report, April 18, 2001
BY CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN
It had been nearly two months since the great earthquake struck western India, but when Stanford Family Practice physician Rich Lee learned in mid-March that many severely injured earthquake victims had not yet been treated, he pulled together a medical team to help relieve their suffering.
The group of 13 Stanford physicians and nurses returned home April 8 from a whirlwind, seven-day trip to India and declared the medical-relief mission a complete success. "The trip exceeded all expectations," Lee said. "Everything that could go wrong didn't, and everything that could go right did."
Before pulling the trip together Lee learned that private hospitals in India had treated patients shortly after the Jan. 26 earthquake, but the overcrowded public hospitals had hundreds of poorer patients with untreated neurologic injuries.
Lee convinced Daniel Kim, director of spinal neurosurgery/reconstructive peripheral surgery at Stanford, to make the trip to India. Kim pulled together a team of his surgical fellows, including Andrew Kam,Tae-ahn Jahng, Tsai-Sheng Fu and Satischandra Gore. The team also included surgical nurses Maria Malone, Monica Gerstner, Fiona Aveyard, Jessica Hancher and Tina Billingsly.
Lee also recruited pediatric general surgeon Baird Smith, otorhinolaryngology professor Willard Fee and hematology department director James Malone to journey to the earthquake-ravaged Gujarat state in western India.
When the medical team arrived on March 31, they found cities just barely starting to recover from the 6.9-magnitude quake. "The devastation was just heartbreaking," Lee said. "There was damage to every structure, and the town of Bhuje was flattened."
At the civil hospital in Gujarat's capital city of Ahmedabad, the largest hospital in Asia, they found more than 5,000 patients overflowing from wards containing only 2,500 beds.
The members of the medical team found themselves working in primitive operating rooms. For instance, doctors monitored a patient's pulse during surgery with a simple finger on the wrist, rather than an electronic monitor. A hand-squeezed bag assisted a patient's breathing rather than a mechnical ventilator. Nonetheless, the Indian physicians "all had big hearts," said Kim. "They were forced to become very good physicians because they have so little to work with."
During a five-day period, the Stanford doctors performed 35 surgeries and consulted on countless other cases. "We couldn't operate fast enough," Kim said. "There were also doctors coming from the private hospitals and asking us to review cases or to perform surgeries." Because of their limited time, however, the Stanford physicians had to stick to their mission of serving poor patients only.
The surgeries themselves were not the most important accomplishment of the trip, however. "Our job was not just to operate, but to teach and train their doctors," Kim said.
The Stanford team brought a great deal of donated new medical equipment, which they trained the Indian physicians to use. Team members had expertise in specialized neurosurgical procedures that the Indian doctors had never before performed. After full days of surgery, the Stanford team held evening seminars to further educate local doctors.
On the next-to-last day, former U.S. President Bill Clinton stopped by the hospital and was impressed by the accomplishments of the Stanford team, Kim said. Clinton was in India to promote earthquake relief and help launch a new foundation.
For Lee and other Stanford medical team members, the payoff was the thanks and support they received from the Indian doctors, people and government. "We left them over a quarter-million dollars in equipment, and the value of the surgeries we performed was about half a million dollars, but the goodwill and sense of accomplishment was priceless," Lee said.
"This trip was just a start," Lee added. The physicians plan to strengthen their ties to the hospitals they visited and continue providing equipment and academic support. They are already making plans to take another team back, Lee said.
"Everybody
felt this trip was a success," Lee said. "We
were extremely pleased by the outcome, and proud and
humbled by what we saw."
