The team in a theatre in hospital in Nepal
On Saturday 25 April a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. It shook the lives of at least 9m people. Nepal’s major cities, including the capital Kathmandu, were badly damaged and rural areas near the epicentre were completely cut off by avalanches.
Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless and entire villages flattened across many areas of the country.
Even those whose homes remained standing were sleeping in the streets because they were terrified by regular aftershocks.
Over 9,000 people were confirmed dead.
Agencies and their partners from all over the world provided emergency shelter, food, clean water and blankets for those in need and helped communities by supporting them to rebuild their lives.
Saty Bhatia, Consultant Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon at the University Hospital of Wales and three of his colleagues went out to Nepal to help treat locals and train hospital staff in Advanced Trauma Life Support.
Saty tells us about his journey: “Myself and my colleagues are part of the British Association of Maxillofacial Surgeons, the Norman Rowe foundation, is a sub-committee, responsible for teaching, training and looking after people in developing and post conflict countries.
“The Chair of the Norman Rowe Foundation, Mr Shakir Mustafa, sent out a request to all consultants in the UK, asking them to help with the situation in Nepal. I responded and said I’d like to go and help. I was chosen as one of the four people to go to Nepal to teach, train and treat patients.
“The other three members of the team that went out to Nepal was made up of consultants, Mr Andrew McLennan, Mr Shakir Mustafa and Mr Anish Sah.
“The largest hospital in Kathmandu was badly damaged by the earthquake. It was left so unsafe that medical teams could not use the main part of the hospital. They had to move into a newly built part of the hospital, the trauma unit which was in a separate building, to continue to treat patients.
“We mainly looked after patients who had significant facial injuries that could not be treated in the local hospitals.
“We taught local medics acute trauma skills so they could manage acute injuries in an effective manner. This is normal training in the UK but not for those in developing countries.
“We hired a van to travel around as it was between 8-9 hours between hospitals and the van enabled us to take our operating equipment around with us. We took all our own equipment, plates, screws and fixings as we didn’t know what we would find out there as we thought the conditions would be very difficult.
“The situation out there wasn’t too bad, they had most of the facilities that we would need to perform surgery.
“We taught, treated and trained in four different hospitals, we operated on four patients, one patient’s surgery took 10 hours of work as there was significant injury to the face.
“The major emphasis of the training was on teaching, learning acute trauma skills so that local people could manage the situation better by themselves. We also taught disaster management, so medics were prepared if something like this ever happened again.
“In total we did 30-40 hours of operating, 40 hours of teaching and 36 hours of travelling between hospitals. All patients we operated on were all discharged when we were there and had positive outcomes from such a negative situation.
“While we were there, Mr Mustafa signed a memorandum of understanding with the university in Nepal to start an exchange programme, teaching Nepalese people facial surgery skills on a regular basis. We would like to send surgeons to visit hospitals in Nepal for a few weeks each year to share their skills and knowledge.
“When we were operating in theatre, we felt two minor quakes, one was 5.0 on the Richter scale. I didn’t feel it, or even notice it, but the others I was with felt it and stopped what they were doing and carried on again 15-20 seconds later once the tremors had stopped.
“During the one case we operated on, the theatre was very, very busy. I thought this was standard practice in Nepal and it was just busy but this wasn’t the case – all the surgeons and doctors in the hospital wanted to come and take a look at what we were doing, they had never seen anything like it before. We take this kind of surgery for granted as we do these operations every day in University Hospital of Wales – this kind of surgery was revolutionary in Nepal.
“The whole experience was intense, but refreshing as despite all their issues, the people around us were really positive and upbeat.
“The people we met in the hospitals in Nepal were amazing, despite all the odds, the strength and character they showed was fantastic, they were all very keen to learn more skills and keen to have the best treatment for their patients.”
