MISSION INTERPLAST ITALY 2005 (Lhasa-Tibet)

Lhasa 2005 - happiness after surgery

The mission of Daniel Gandini this year, the team leader and organizer was Giancarlo Liguori, Turin, Vice-Chairman of Interplast Italy was held in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which is located almost 4000 meters high.

Lhasa, the holy city, the soul of Tibet, is still the place of pilgrimages from all over the country. A was once the residence of the Dalai Lama before he was exiled in Dharamsala, a town at the foot dell'Himalaya but outside the confines Tibetans.

Reach Tibet requested by the Interplast team of 2 days and a half journey with a stopover in Shanghai and in Chengdu (little known city in China ... 12 Milon people!), Then get to Lhasa.

The arrival to the city of Lhasa, is announced, coming from the Gongkar, sight in the distance of the majestic Potala palace, white and ocher, which dominates the town and the valley of the Kyi-chu river.

Unfortunately, in Lhasa, as indeed throughout Tibet, little remained of what was before the Maoist China of 1951, when 95% of Tibetan monasteries, with their wealth and traditions were razed to the ground and almost all the monks killed. Lhasa itself is now almost entirely turned against the Chinese, and invaded, as much of the country for prostitution, billiards and Chinese mobile phone and most recently also from ... Beijing-Lhasa railway. For now (2004) from all this will still save the old area of the Barkhor, the charming medieval pilgrimage circuit around the beautiful temple of Jokhang, the most sacred temple in Tibet and revered, that every morning on foot, to go to work in hospitals, going among the pilgrims in prayer and wonderful stalls selling fabrics, spices, vegetables, meat and yak butter.

The shipment consisted of 10 people: 2 plastic surgeons, Giancarlo Liguori and Daniele Gandini, two Anesthetist (Laura Ceretto  and Maurizio Turello), a pediatrician (Franco Garofalo), a medical internist and radiologist (Adolfo Scala), three scrub Nurses (Nicoletta Silvestrini, Miriam Bonardo and Mary Convertini), and a collaborator, the journalist Renata Prevost who along with photographer from Milan Carlo Orsi has dedicated to this mission and that of Shigatze of 2004, a book titled "I smile you smile ", ed. Valentina (Milan)

In Lhasa the Interplast team has worked at the Municipal People's Hospital, an old state hospital in the direction of China, as a result of negotiations and not just with the decisive support and assistance of the Swiss Red Cross and Red Cross Tibetan, Italian had given the team the use of a small operating room equipped with 2 beds and 2 operators surgical lamps, all the rest of the equipment, tools, drugs, consumables, electrosurgical, monitors and anesthesia equipment was brought from Italy. Shipment had with him about 700 kg of material, divided into 40 containers.

The large quantity of material that these missions require you from time to time purchased thanks to donations that come to Interplast Italy from individuals, institutions and service clubs in Italy.
Can operate simultaneously on two separate beds operators Giancarlo Liguori Daniele Gandini and managed to operate in 12 days in the operating room, 75 patients each, for a total of 151 patients with serious outcomes of burns, deformities of hands and cleft lip and palate, major congenital malformation of the face, with the presence of a crack that involves full-thickness the lip, jaw bone and the palate of young patients, preventing him to eat and speak properly, and, given the severe disability aesthetic, to have a normal life of relationship with others.

In Tibet, patients in need of intervention and care were recruited with the help of the local Red Cross, not only in cities but mainly in rural areas, small community of shepherds, often far away from Lhasa;

It was generally very poor people, who would have had no other opportunity to be working, as most hospitals in the country makes this health generally only after the payment figures have not within the reach of these poor people.

The procedures performed were all successful and last days in Lhasa, the team was timely acts of gratitude and thanks moving by patients and their families, my heartfelt thanks then there is the Tibetan representatives that Chinese authorities, with the hope that this important collaboration can continue in the future.