The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Chandigarh Stories

HEALTH

US doctors perform free surgeries
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — A four-member team comprising Dr Allan Stocks and Dr Harinderjit Singh along with two assistants, Ms Shanon and Ms Mary, performed about 100 free eye surgeries during their week-long stay in Chandigarh which ended today.

All operations were performed at Sri Guru Harkrishan Sahib Eye Hospital, Sohana, near here, according to Dr Davinder Singh Virdi, senior consultant and Director of SGHS Phaco Training and Research Institute. Both Dr Stocks and Dr Harinderjit are on the faculty of the Medical College of Georgia in the USA.

During his weeklong stay, Dr Allan Stocks, a superspecialist in cataract and refractive surgery, performed 50 cataract surgeries on poor and needy patients, mostly using phacoemulssification technique with foldable lens. He also delivered lectures on the latest techniques of cataract operations being performed in the USA and how these could be modified in the Indian context.

Dr Harinderjit Singh, a superspecialist in vitro-retinal surgery, performed 15 posterior segment surgeries on poor patients. Both doctors delivered lectures in the Department of Ophthalmology in the PGI, Sohana hospital and a seminar conducted jointly by the Chandigarh Ophthalmological Society and SGHS Phaco Training and Research Institute, Sohana, besides at Hotel Aroma on Saturday in collaboration with Allergan Inc.

Dr Stocks spoke on complications in cataract surgery and the management of these. Later, at a press conference, Dr Allan said eye-health care had a tremendous scope of improvement in north India. To give a quality eye-health care to the people, we must control the population first. He said pollution levels in most Indian cities were high which led to the surface ocular disorders like allergies and dry eyes.

Dr Harinderjit Singh said despite cataract being the leading cause of blindness in India, most resident doctors were being trained adequately to perform cataract surgery in their postgraduate courses.

Experts discuss various diseases
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — Various medical experts deliberated on wide range of topics like tuberculosis, dengue, corneal blindness, sleep disorders, hypertension, cervical pain and doctor-patient relationship in the Medicine Update Conference at Lecture Theatre I of the PGI.

The conference was organised under the aegis of medical journal Current with a view to helping practitioners of all medical disciplines update their knowledge. While Dr J.L. Bhatia, a veteran chest physician of Amritsar inaugurated the conference, the new PGI Director, Dr S.K. Sharma, and Dr B.K. Sharma were the guests of honour. In all, 150 doctors of the city and the surrounding areas attended the conference.

The scientific sessions began with Dr A. Janmeja, Head of the Department of Chest Diseases in Government Medical College Hospital, Sector 32, discussing problems of multiple drug-resistance tuberculosis. He said is the incidence of it was nearly 15 per cent in our country and was increasing over the past five years. He said it was a man-made problem and occurred mostly due to mistreatment by doctors, patients and irregular drug supply to poor TB patients. The treatment of MDR-TB was 100 times costlier than drug-sensitive TB and most patients could not afford it, hence, very few patients got cured even after treatment, he said.

Dr J.L. Bhatia said the MDR-TB could be prevented by treating fresh TB cases adequately and properly. Dr R.K. Ratho, Head of the Department of Virology talked about the new diagnostic technique of dengue haemorrhagic fever.

Prof Kartar Singh, Head of the Department of Gastroenterology in the PGI, focussed on the gastro-esophageal reflux diseases at length. He said alcohol, smoking and overeating should be avoided to keep such ailments at bay. Dr P. Kulhara, Head of the Psychiatry Department, talked about cost and burden of psychiatric illnesses.

Dr H.J. Singh, a Jalandhar-based consultant on sleep disorders, talked about these diseases and said this problem was not recognised as a disease in our country and was ridiculed as simply snoring. A proper treatment and prevention of sleep disorders could affect a major change in a person's life, he said. Daytime sleepiness, sleeping at work place and during driving, confusion, loss of memory were a few signs of sleep diseases.

Prof Raj Bahadur, Head of the Orthopaedic Department in the GMCH-32, said cervical spondylitis was a disease of the white-collared class and their counterparts in the villages never happened to attend the out-patient clinic. He said this was because they did neck exercises inadvertently, which strengthened their neck muscles. Dr O.N. Nagi talked about causes and treatment of trauma in orthopaedics.

Dr Sanjay Jain said systolic blood pressure should also be the guideline for the management of hypertension in old persons as it could cause of stroke if not taken care of. Dr Amod Gupta talked about diabetic blindness and role of physicians in controlling it.

Dr B.N.S. Walia, a former Director of the PGI, highlighted the need for a better doctor-patient relationship for effective treatment.

Meanwhile, Dr M.L. Bansal, Chief Editor of Current, criticised the commercialisation which he said had crept in this noble profession. Most doctors who spent lakhs on getting an MBBS degree, tried their best to recover the maximum of it from their patients, he said. The doctor-patient relationship had been reduced to that of a shopkeeper and a seller, he added. He urged the government authorities to ban the functioning of private medical colleges in the country which were fleecing students in the name of imparting education.

Meeting on medical education reforms
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — Leading medical experts of the region participated in the third meeting of the Dr B.D. Gupta committee on reforms in medical education, held under the auspices of GOMCO Research Foundation, in the office of Dr V.K. Kak, Director-Principal of Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, here yesterday.

Addressing the participants, Dr Kak and Dr Ravinder Singh opined that a major portion of the curriculum had become redundant and needed to be abolished. Dr B.D. Gupta suggested that the Israel model would suit us better, where the medical student was trained as a nurse in the first year.

Dr S.P. Dhir and Dr S.P. Kaushik dwelt on the importance of introducing information technology education in the curriculum. Dr Sarla Malhotra and Dr Gurjeewan Grewal emphasised on strengthening internship.

Dr N.K. Goel and Dr C.S. Gautam suggested that pharmacology and other basic subjects be taught in collaboration with clinical medicine to make the training more effective. Dr Raj Bahadur and Dr B.K. Chopra spoke on the issues related to producing a good family physician out of MBBS doctors.

Dr Krishan Vij felt that modern problems like female foeticide be included in jurisprudence and unnecessary details on obstetrics and psychaitry be deleted. Dr B.D. Gupta and Dr R. Kumar were asked to submit a report to the Government of India and the Medical Council of India for inclusion of committee's recommendations in the new curriculum.

SPORT

City club qualifies for national league
By Our Sports Reporter

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — Youngsters Club became the lone team to qualify for the National Football League (second division) at Chennai. There they will play their first match against Indian Bank on March 9. Today, in their last league match in the Sector 17 Football Stadium, city boys beat Himachal Club team by eleven goals to one.

Yesterday, Lions Club, Ambala, had beaten the HP team, 7-0. Youngsters Club required to score more goals than Lions Club today in order to qualify, which they did.

Mr Ravinder Talwar, President of the Chandigarh Football Association who hosted this three-day meet, said it was only on February 29 that they received instructions from the All-India Football Federation to conduct this tournament.

Mr Jarnail Singh, a former international football player was honoured with Rs 5,000 and a memento by the President of the CFA. The Youngsters Club team will leave for Chennai tomorrow.

In the final league match today, The first breakthrough for the city team came in the 18th minute of the match. Mohil converted a pass from Vinay Kanwar into a goal and the city team went up, 1-0. Next fifteen minutes of the first half saw five more goals scored. Vinay scored a field goal in the 21st minute and he struck again in the 23rd minute. Vinay give a good pass to Vishal in the 29th minute who converted it into a goal. Anil Saini chipped in with a header in the 31 minute. Before the end of the first half, Mohil scored his second goal to make the lead 6-0.

The second half began with the HP team displaying some fine moves and their forwards attacked the rival goal several times. However, Youngsters Club's Rajeev Rattan scoring his first goal of the match through a header in the 53rd minute to make the scorecard read 7-0. In the 59th minute, Rajeev struck a powerful shot over the rival Goalkeeper's head to score another goal. In the 65th minute, Vinay Kanwar dodged past the HP team's goalkeeper to score the ninth goal for the team. In the 69th minute, Rajeev scored another goal, followed by Vishal in the 79th minute. When hardly a minute was left, Sachin of the HP team scored the lone goal for his team.