News India Amid border tensions, Indian doctors aid Pakistani patients

Amid border tensions, Indian doctors aid Pakistani patients

New Delhi, Jan 12: When Pakistani raiders were beheading Indian soldiers, a group of Indian doctors were helping their Pakistani counterparts to do complex liver transplants in Lahore.The doctors from Delhi's Apollo Hospital spent long



Pakistan has one of the highest cases of liver diseases, and scores of Pakistanis come to India for treatment. Gupta said Delhi's Apollo Hospital has played host to over 400 such Pakistani patients in the last eight years.



Since many Pakistani patients are not able to travel to India for more reasons than one, Indian doctors at times get invited to Pakistan.

Anaesthetist K. Lalitha, one of the five doctors in the Indian team, said the three Pakistani patients they oversaw included a woman, whose liver donor was her son, and two men.

The Indian doctors spent about 10 hours on the first day Jan 6, finishing an hour after midnight.

The next two days also consumed long hours though the Pakistani surgeons spent far more time on the patients.

Both doctors said the Pakistanis they met were very warm.

"People were very nice (to us)," Gupta said. "Those we met, the doctors, the nurses, no one really wanted any war with India... They also said that the country was facing major (internal) trouble."

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