Joie de Vivre: A painting by Saanvi Joshi, whose deformity of the hand was corrected dirty
In the recent Indian Khelo Games in New Delhi, Mehak Kaur was part of Haryana’s victorious team, pocketing gold in table tennis. Sharing in their joy were doctors elsewhere in the country: at the Ganga hospital in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Kaur was born without a right thumb and had a folded arm, says Dr. S Raja Sabathy, president, plastic surgery division, hand surgery, reconstructive microurgerry and burns, Ganga Hospital. In 2008, doctors created a thumb from their index finger and the folded arm ran to the right. And there is no leg does not go back to the young champion.
Either a typing, an industrial worker or a sports worker: a deformity or injury affects livelihoods and, often, young people are affected at the best moment of their life, says Dr. Sabathy. Hand injuries are the most common among injuries in the workplace, he says, he thought that a greater application of industrial safety rules has helped reduce accidents.
There is the direct cost of surgery, but the indirect cost of loss of employment and other disabling factors is high with a hand of injury, he says. Microcirugia has joined the benefits of joining an amputated hand or fingers, he explains. The “Cost-Effort-Recompensa ratio” is high when the hand injuries are treated, says Dr. Sabathy. In a first for an Indian doctor, he was recently appointed president of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (with more than 60 member countries) for three years. His hope is to achieve “surgical attention from the hand of quality to the millions that have less privileges.”
Health ambassadors
Indian medical care must be positioned as the best quality and not simply as profitable, he says, and adds that the hospital has trained more than 3,300 medical professionals in manual surgeries since 1991. About half of manual surgeons in Bangladesh and hospital associations are looking to support the training of African doctors in India. The medical professionals trained abroad are the best ambassadors, he says, since they have an appreciation of their host country.
Closest home, manual surgeries cost more than ₹ 1 Lakh, says Dr. Sabathy, urging companies to support interventions that change the thesis life.
Hand lesions these days are largely due to road accidents, observes, in addition to diseases such as diabetes (affecting hand and feet). Financing surgeries for birth deformities is a challenge for parents, since health insurance does not cover the “pre -existing” conditions, he says.
But when everything joins and a father shares the first writing or awarded painting of a child whose manual deformity was correct, “becomes North to,” says Dr. Sabathy.
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Posted on May 4, 2025
