Offtrack: Champa: Scalpel of Hope

Offtrack

India Today, February 15, 1999
Feb 15, 1999

CHAMPA
Scalpel of Hope

This surgeon lends a new meaning to the lives of polio and leprosy patients.

By Bharat Desai

Hospitals are the most unpleasant of places. They smell of disease, they reek of fear, they echo with distress. But sometimes they also stand as beacons of renewal. The Bisahudas Mahant Memorial Government Hospital in Champa of Bilaspur district, Madhya Pradesh is one such place. Teeming with polio and leprosy patients, hope pounds the corridors of the hospital's orthopaedic wing thanks to a 41-year-old assistant surgeon. His friendly smile apart, what strikes you about Dr Hari Singh Chandel is the eternal optimist in him relentlessly trying to rub off the hope on his patients.

Chandel has generated such confidence in his patients that they come to him with other problems as well Nothing deters this good doctor. Not even the 14 transfer orders which have ironically been served upon him in the past three years. It has disrupted his work -- he moves to a cousin's clinic in the interim -- but he has refused to move, always having to rephrase an old refrain that his patients need him here. Thankfully, he has admirers in high places who agree.

It is work that on initial scrutiny may seem routine. It is not. Says Rasheed, a leprosy patient himself, who manages the Leprosy Rehabilitation Centre run by the Bharatiya Kushta Nivaran Sangh: "There was a time when lepers were not treated at the hospital. But Doctor Saheb has changed all that."

Chandel seems to have made a profession out of being different. As a young man he was attracted to the army, even securing a job as a radar mechanic, before his father stepped in, put his foot down and directed him towards medicine. His story truly began years later -- perhaps predictably with a transfer, but one that he had opted for, from lucrative Bhopal to Champa in 1990. There, he was appalled. Not because Champa had one of the largest concentrations of leprosy patients in the state, some 3,000. But because they were turned away by the hospital on the grounds that it lacked facilities. Here was a classic Indian irony: medical assistance was refused because the hospital staff was afraid of catching an infection.

If any doubt remained in his mind, a brief stint with the Lifeline Express which visited Raigarh in November 1995, erased it. "I thought if a hospital on tracks could do such a fine job with minimum facilities, why couldn't I?"Getting down to work, he invited patients with orthopaedic problems and organised a 30-day camp with support from charitable organisations. The response was not merely good; it was tremendous. Over 600 persons registered themselves, more than 200 were operated upon for leprosy and polio-related problems like claw hand, foot drop, nasal deformity and thumb deformity. Since then, he has become the surgeon with the prolific scalpel.

The good doctor is also a smart one. In Champa, the specialised equipment he requires will not materialise from government largesse. So Chandel got his rich patients to pitch in. The donations are routed through the Kushta Nivaran Sangh, supported by the Mumbai-based Sushilaben Ramnik Bhai Jhaveri Charitable Trust.

It has not always been easy. The lepers were initially suspicious of him. Rasheed himself recalls how he used to spurn Chandel's assistance. When persistence didn't pay, divine intervention stepped in. Rasheed broke his leg in an accident and had no option but to be treated by Chandel. After the surgery, when Chandel refused to accept any money, Rasheed allowed him free access to the centre. "I am now ashamed of the way I treated him earlier," he admits.

Still, many of the afflicted were reluctant. Most may have wanted restorative surgery for, as Chandel says, "It not only helps them perform their chores better but improves their self-confidence to a great extent." But they were afraid to ask. They still are, though that fear has abated marginally, enough for nearly a 100 of them to opt for surgery. And word is spreading.

The leprosy patients have such faith in Chandel that they come to him for all their problems now. A woman leprosy patient, for instance, rushed to him the other day with a gynaecological problem. Afraid that a gynaecologist would not treat her, she had come to Chandel. All he told her was that he would take her to the right doctor. But the brooding face lightened up. A dose of hope had just been injected.

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