Author: Viji Sundram
Publication: India West
Date: February 9, 2001
When Dr. Mihir Meghani trained a
couple of years ago in disaster medical relief, he didn't dream that he
would be providing it in a town that had been leveled by a powerful earthquake.
In a tent where latex gloves were
luxury items.
Were amputations were performed
without the benefit of anesthesia.
"Professionally, it was one of the
best learning experiences in disaster medical relief," the 29-year-old
Meghani told India-West last week, the day after he returned from earthquake-stricken
Gujarat, where he had volunteered his skills for five days. "I learned
how to be creative in the middle of a disaster, something they don't teach
in medical school."
Since he completed his residency
program at the Detroit Medical Center last year, Meghani has been working
for Kaiser Permanente in Hayward, Calif., in emergency services. He's also
part of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, a voluntary team, coordinated
by the Federal Emergency Management Assistance.
He was in Delhi when the earthquake
happened, vacationing with his parents and making plans to go with them
to Allahabad the next day, to participate in the Kumbh Mela.
When early reports put the figure
of those killed at around 500, Meghani sympathized, but continued making
plans for the pilgrimage.
"But when I heard hours later that
thousands may have perished in Gujarat, I felt I should go there, given
that medical disaster relief is right up my alley," Meghani said. "I felt
I could be useful, especially since I also speak Gujarati."
So while his parents proceeded to
Allahabad and for their planned dip in the Ganga, Meghani headed for Bhuj
via Ahmedabad. There, he immediately joined a team of doctors from the
Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, who were working in a makeshift hospital volunteer
organizations had set up - a tent containing a couple of tables to perform
surgeries, a few pairs of latex gloves, saline, providine-iodine and gauze.
Over the next two days, stretchers
containing the injured poured in, Meghani said, with Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh and Vishwa Hindu Parishad volunteers controlling the flow of patients
to keep the tent from jamming up.
His most moving experience involved
watching a British team of rescuers along with Indian military personnel
drill through a huge pile of rubble on the fourth day after the quake because
a man believed his wife and children might still be alive amid the destruction.
The rescuers worked for 12 straight hours before they found the man's wife
lying face down on top of their 10-year-old son. The woman was dead from
a crushed skull and other injuries, but the boy was miraculously alive,
although severely debydrated and only semi-conscious. Rescuers believed
she had shielded her child with her body.
Meghani said he had to amputate
the boy's leg below the knee, but the father was overjoyed that at least
one of his children had survived.
"It's easy to ask why a rescue team
would want to spend so many hours trying to save one family, when thousands
of people had died in the quake," Meghani said. "I realized at that moment
that every life has a value to somebody."
Since X-ray machines were not available,
doctors had to clinically make the diagnosis on people who came in with
bruises. To err on the safe side, "we treated most everything as fractures
and plastered our patients up," he said.
In a village near the town of Anjar
where Meghani and a few other doctors volunteered their services for a
day, the medical team had to make splints out of cardboard boxes because
there was no plaster available.
Meghani said that although no governmental
organizations were visible, it was heartwarming to see the level of volunteerism
from NGOs and individuals, as well. Foreign rescue teams worked as if the
people they were trying to save were their own, he said, even though the
rescuers were pretty much left to their own resources.
"The teams from France and Japan
were not provided translators or transportation to bring them from the
airport to the disaster site," Meghani said. He said members of the French
rescue team told him that they couldn't land their plane loaded with emergency
relief supplies at the Bhuj airport because it was shut off for Prime Minister
Vajpayee's red carpet arrival. The French plane was instead re-routed to
Ahmedabad and rescuers had to take a bus to Bhuj, a 12-hour trip.
It was in Bhuj that Meghani appreciated
all the creature comforts people in the West take for granted. Like most
everyone else, he had to sleep in the open, making do with the blanket
or two provided to him.
There were no bathrooms, so everyone
used the great outdoors to ease themselves.
But Meghani said the hardships notwithstanding,
his five-day stint in the makeshift hospital in Bhuj was one of the most
rewarding and satisfying experiences he has had.
"Yes, it would have been nice to
go to the Kumbh Mela," he said. "But what I experienced was much more rewarding.
"I mean, I can always go to Benares
and take a dip in the Ganga some day."
