Background
The first time I came to India was in the year 2012, when I came along with my dad, the late Dr. Oleyombo Awojobi, for the conference of the Association of Rural Surgeons of India (ARSI) in Ratlam. A live surgery workshop was arranged during the conference, and that was where I first saw gasless laparoscopic surgeries. The many advantages of the procedures to the rural surgeons were immediately apparent, and my dad, a pioneer in rural surgery, was interested. We met his friend Dr. J. Gnanaraj who conducted the workshop during lunch time and started planning about it.
We met Dr. Gnanaraj again during the ARSI conference at Bachhau in Gujarat. At that time, my dad decided that I should have the training in gasless laparoscopic surgeries as soon as I had finished the National Youth Services Corps (NYSC) internship.
I arrived in India on March 1, 2015. After a brief discussion with Dr. Gnanaraj, he gave me an article on Cystometrogram and said I should be able to perform it myself. He outlined my training schedule as follows:
- Accompanying him everywhere he was going to operate, which included surgical camps in the North-East
- Getting a simulator to practice the different basic laparoscopic surgical skills before attempting them on patients
- Registering for the Karunya University online course for Lift Laparoscopic surgery
The simulator was purchased from Staan Bio-Medical Engineering, based in Coimbatore, and with it, I started practicing the skills, as shown in Figures A and B.
...
One Comment