The thin and weak frame of Venkatesh, a barber by profession in Balanagar, conveys years of pain that he might have endured. At the age of 19, doctors detected he had tuberculosis in knees and needed replacement.
Rajitha, a 21-year-old housewife visited various hospitals for severe pain but nobody could detect what was wrong with her. Quickly, the pain got so intense that she was bedridden and unable to take care of her child and household. Finally, she ended up at Osmania General Hospital (OGH) where doctors said that she had to undergo hip replacement surgery to be mobile again.
The common thread binding them both is that they were young with several productive years ahead and both were poor and did not have financial muscle to undergo surgeries in private hospitals. The Arogyasri coverage, which both of them had, did not cover implants and their families were desperately scrambling for finance.
On Wednesday, 10 patients including Venkatesh and Rajitha, who had similar kind of background and health problems, thanked OGH surgeons and Helping Hand Foundation (HHF) for taking up knee replacement and hip replacement surgeries for free.
“I struggled for five years with my knees. Two months ago I underwent the knee replacement surgery at OGH and I am normal now,” brims Venkatesh with happiness. “We wanted to send a message that Government hospitals are equipped to conduct complicated surgeries. In the last two months we facilitated 10 hip replacement surgeries and two total knee replacement surgeries free of cost. OGH surgeons did a great job,” said Mujtaba Hasan Askari, Managing Trustee, HHF.
While HHF raised funds for surgeries from philanthropists, orthopaedic team of OGH conducted surgeries. “We have a very good orthopaedic team. HHF made arrangements for the implants while we did the rest. In the end, all patients have recovered,” Superintendent, OGH, C. G. Raghuram said.
Senior orthopaedic doctors including S. Sreenivasa Reddy, G.V.S. Murthy, Ravindranath and their team conducted the surgeries on ten patients.
