THE SPINE FOUNDATTION'S
JOURNEY AT VN DESAI HOSPITAL
Milestones..
2013
- Spine speciality operation theater inaugurated. Thanks to donation by Mr. Sunil Dalal.
- Live Deformity correction surgical workshop, attended by national and international faculties.
2015
- ASSI spine fellowship exam was conducted twice at the hospital.
- Specialist Physiotherapy department for spine patients.
2016-2019
- 16th November. TSF completes 500 spine surgeries.
- Spine OT Renovate with a donation from Walchand Trust.
Quality Spine Care
The Spine Foundation at VN Desai Hospital.
19th of May 1998. The Spine Foundation was born out of a doctor’s calling to serve the poor and underprivileged in his country. The doctor was Dr Shekhar Bhojraj. A man who had trained himself across the world in learning the latestdevelopments in the emerging speciality of spine surgery. He set up India’s first exclusive spine surgery speciality unit at KEM Hospital. Dr Bhojraj is the first specialised dedicated spine surgeon in the country. His pioneering journey to establish specialised spine treatment in India has made him a living legend in this field. From a family seeped in Gandhian values, Dr Bhojaraj always wanted to give back to society. To serve the people who could not access good medical care, either because they did not have the financial means or there was no medical care available in the vicinity. The Spine Foundation was established to do just that; bring quality spine care to the people who could not afford or access good medical treatment. The Spine Foundation started treating and operating on patients for free at the SEARCH campus in Gadchiroli, Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children and HV Tilak Hospital in Mumbai. However, when they wanted to reach out to the poor people of Mumbai, they reached out to the VN Desai, a municipal hospital frequented by the poor who could not afford private hospitals. When the Spine Foundation first proposed the idea, everyone was sceptical. There was just no precedent for such an idea. Moreover, the hospital had no manpower or infrastructure to spare for The Spine Foundation. But Dr Bhojraj and his team steered through every obstacle, reached out to every power they could and worked ceaselessly to make it happen. Finally, in 2009, the Spine Foundation opened its spine unit at the VN Desai Municipal General Hospital to bring spine care to people who could not afford it.
NUMBER OF CASES TREATED
AT VN DESAI SPINE OPD [2009-2022]
Surgery With Compassion
The Pentagon Charitable Foundation stepped in to sponsor the operation theatre that the foundation needed at VN Desai Hospital for spine surgeries. Thanks to their help, the hospital has a well-equipped OT running today. In its very first year of operation, The Spine Foundation performed 20 surgeries at VN Desai Hospital. By 2017, OPD patients had gone up to 2303 and 83 surgeries were done that year. And with each passing year, the number of poor patients kept multiplying. And then came 2020, and the Coronavirus decimated the world. This was the time when the poor became even more vulnerable. The Spine Foundation doctors fought through the difficult conditions and shortage of everything, including oxygen, to continue treating medical emergencies. These emergency surgeries done under spinal anaesthesia are a challenge at the best of times and became a critical test of the doctors’ skill and excellence under Covid’s ominous shadow. These difficult times bought out the best in The Spine Foundation. Just because The Spine Foundation treats poor patients for free does not mean that the patients get second-class treatment. At VN Desai, the foundation performs complicated surgeries like those for congenital scoliosis correction with the help of neuromonitoring. The Spine Foundation doctors have also started doing minimally invasive surgeries in VN Desai hospital, like tubular microscopic surgeries (using an ENT microscope) and endoscopic surgeries (using an arthroscopic video monitoring system) along with complex intradural spinal tumour surgeries in team with neurosurgeons. Thanks to the foundation’s generous donors, the OT at VN Desai has been renovated. Today, this hospital boasts modular OT with laminar flow and proper anaesthesia setup, which is as good as any other operation theatre you would find in a private five-star hospital in Mumbai. Thanks to this sterilised OT, surgeries at VN Desai have become safer, with lesser chance of infection and other complications. Complication rates of surgeries in VN Desai Hospital are at par with the best private hospitals in Mumbai.
