When Mumbai Docs Head Out For The Backwoods Posted By : Mike Smith

Mumbai: Khalid Laheji and his colleague M Parekh have been following the same routine for a decade. On the last Sunday of the month, the two leave their homes at 7 am sharp, get into a car, and drive down into the foothills of the Western Ghats at Karjat. Conditions are usually perfect; the village, located at a height of 636 feet and surrounded by steep, green slopes, is an ideal spot for treks, mountain climbing and river rafting. But Laheji and Parekh never allow themselves the luxury of such an outing.



The duo spend their day in the valley inspecting upto 200 patients from surroundings hamlets, most of them tribals or marginal farmers with small holdings. For Laheji it’s a personal crusade against blindness; the eye specialist who has his practice on tony Turner Road in the heart of Mumbai, sees the initiative as a mode of service to the cataract-afflicted in the remote outback.



“We have been doing it without any help from the government or the district authorities for 10 years now,” says Laheji.



The camp is visited by people who trek miles to get there. By the end of the day, the doctors draw up a list of those in potential need of a surgery. They are then put on a bus and brought to the city where they are admitted to an eye hospital in Juhu and put through a lens implantation procedure free of cost. To date, 9,000 such surgeries have been performed, with help from a few philanthropic organisations.



Laheji and Parekh are not alone. In fact, they belong to a undiminishing breed of physicians in Mumbai who conduct regular tours of the countryside, travelling on weekends to dusty, mofussil towns like Shahpur or the backwoods of Mokhada in Thane’s adivasi belt. Their motto” to serve the underprivileged in areas where the state’s welfare system has all but collapsed.



Surgeon Muffazal Lakdawala is a relatively recent convert to the cause but nevertheless an impassioned proponent for it.



“It gives me an opportunity to give back something to society and I think it’s the best thing about being a doctor, it may be the only thing that’s good about it,” he says Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala is part of a team that travels every year to Sumerpur in Pali district of Rajasthan for a four day camp during which 120-125 endoscopic surgeries are performed on patients with a range of ailments.



A town with a population of 31,000, Sumerpur’s best-known address is Bhagwan Mahavir hospital where the team from Mumbai puts up for four nights, working 15-hour shifts while patients keep streaming in.



“My students and teachers both come along for the trip. I remember a senior telling me once, ‘I never thought anyone could make me do a gall bladder surgery at 2 am.’ That’s the kind of atmosphere that prevails.”



For Muffazal Lakdawala, the most memorable aspect about these annual trips he makes in January is the relationships he forges. Unlike the city where doctor-patient equations tend to be “professional” in nature, the experience in Sumerpur, he says, is moving.



“They come back with their families to meet you, they touch your feet in gratitude,” he exclaims.

Muffazal Lakdawala, the Founder and Director of CODS created a support centre to battle the cause of obesity. Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala is also the Founder member of IFSO which has increased the visibility of Asian surgical fraternity.