Editorial: Saint of the surgery?

Sydney
2 March 2003

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Editorial: Saint of the surgery?

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Editorial: Saint of the surgery?

Modern saints are a big feature of Pope John Paul's pontificate, but they can come in the strangest guises. Nor are they all Catholics.

We may very well have seen one last week on the ABC's Foreign Correspondent - Dr Devi Prasad Shetty.

Clad in green surgeon's gown and white hairnet, Dr Shetty is an old-fashioned doctor saint, the kind Hollywood used to make movies about. He and his heart team at India's Bangalore Hospital are responsible for saving the lives of 17,000 of India's poorest people by giving them life-saving heart operations, many for free.

The mechanics are not the problem. The cost is, said Dr Shetty, speaking about why only 50,000 of the 2.5 million Indians who need heart surgery every year receive it.

This is why one of his lucky and emotional patientstells the embarrassed doctor he is a saint. He dismisses this, saying: "I'm just doing my duty as any other individual, but unfortunately society is degraded to such a level that just being a normal human being is considered godly."

The good doctor was certainly inspired by a saint - or at least a saint-to-be: Mother Teresa. She went to him for treatment 14 years ago and inspired him to his life-saving work.

If Pope John Paul needs another miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, a bit of lateral thinking might help - through Dr Shetty she has indirectly saved the lives of 17,000 of India's poorest; many of them children.

Dr Shetty gave up a medical fortune to do this holy work, turning his back on a lucrative medical career in London, where he trained. But the peaceful smile on his unlined, beatific features tells of gold stored in heaven instead.

And if the Vatican needs a specific 'miracle', it could do worse than 10-year-old Vadival. This delicate boy, the financial hope of his impoverished family, had a hole in the heart that was killing him; a problem that would have been easily fixed years earlier had he lived in, say, Australia.

Dr Shetty's team did fix it. Vadival's tiny, tearful mother tried to fall to her knees before him in gratitude, but thedoctor would not allow it, saying he was "only doing his duty".

The doctor would probably protest about his future plans being described as 'a miracle', too. But they are in a way. He and his team, which includes an Australian, Dr Colin John, whom Dr Shetty inspired to join him, plan to build a chain of affordable heart hospitals across the developing world to take medicine to the world's poorest. Mother Teresa would approve.

If you would like to make a contribution to Dr Shetty's work, go to www.abc.net.au. A synopsis of the story is also available on the 'foreign' section of the website.