New Life: Surgery Camps
Through the tender mercy of God, the dayspring (morning light) from
heaven is about to break upon us. – Luke 1:78
Babitha Kallimel was born in the coastal region of the southernmost part of India, in the state of Kerala. As a medical student, she came to know Jesus Christ as her personal savior. Her decision to follow the Lord caused her wealthy and influential family to inform her one day, “You are no longer our daughter.”
During one of her breaks from school, Babitha could not go home, because her family refused to accept her new faith. She spent that vacation alone in the dorms, filled with deep pain and loneliness. But one day, as she began to sing an old, Indian Christian hymn, she heard God call her to lay down her life and take His healing through medicine to the unreached and vulnerable. After finishing her medical residencies in family medicine in the United States and in general surgery in India, Babitha began her journey to serve God with the Indian Evangelical Team (IET).
INIAN EVANGELICAL TEAM (parent organization of Compelled)
The Indian Evangelical Team (IET) is Christian non-profit, incorporated in India. It is led by a board of directors and serves the nations of India, Nepal, and Bhutan. IET’s call is to take the truth and love of Jesus Christ to the most unreached and oppressed in South Asia. The Great Commission is at the core of this call, as we organize several compassion and justice ministries.
When Dr. Kallimel joined IET, we were able to add medical missions to our existing list of outreach initiatives. Over the last decade, we’ve been able to share the healing power of Jesus Christ—through prayer and medicine—with remote tribes and villagers, who otherwise would have no access to health care.
I am a missionary heart and soul, God had an only Son, and he was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation of him I am…. In this service I hope to live, in it I wish to die.
– David Livingstone
MEDICAL MINISTRY: Twin Focus
Today, IET’s medical ministry has two important focuses. The first is running the Dayspring Clinic, based in New Delhi. This clinic serves the poor, marginalized, at-risk teen girls, slum dwellers, refugees, and more. In a country where healthcare is used, to a large extent, as a money-making machine, Dayspring and its Christian healthcare providers are highly trusted by patients to provide “quality healthcare from those who genuinely care.”
The Dayspring Clinic is linked to several hospitals for tertiary care purposes. The patients at the Dayspring Clinic are charged on a sliding scale, allowing the clinic to be self-sufficient in managing operational costs.
In the future, we hope to replicate a similar model of self-sustaining, quality clinics in strategically located cities and towns in India and Nepal. We have identified a geographical location for our next clinic in the town of Siliguri, which borders India, Nepal, and Bhutan.
FREE FIXATIVE SURGICAL CAMPS
The second focus of IET’s Medical Ministry is hosting free, fixative surgical camps in remote villages with no access to health care.
There are more than a million villages in the three nations of India, Nepal, and Bhutan. In India alone, there are about 650,000 villages, and about 80% of South Asian people live in these villages.
Sadly, most of these villages have no access to even basic health care practices. Witch doctors and shamans are the first people villagers and tribespeople approach when they are ill. Going to a hospital, which often takes hours of travel, is far from easy. Additionally, the city scares most tribespeople, and costs are prohibitive for poor villagers. In Babitha’s words, “My heart breaks to see women suffering with uterine prolapses or children suffering with simple, treatable conditions. They are beautiful, God’s children. It is our responsibility to take God’s healing to them through medicine and prayer. I absolutely love doing fixative surgical camps. I wish I could do them more. The ministry of healing is beautiful.”
The wounded surgeon plies the steel, that questions the distempered part. Beneath the bleeding hands we feel,
the sharp compassion of the healer's art.
– Four Quartets, East Coker, By T. S. Eliot
A fixative surgical camp has three broad phases:
First Phase: In this phase, one of our indigenous field leaders presents the need for a surgical camp in their region. It is important that the invite comes from the people. We then send our camp coordinator from the Dayspring Clinic to go on a site visit, in order to understand the people and their needs more carefully. The coordinator will also use this time to find an adequate place to conduct surgeries. Our desire is to find a town, nearest to the tribal villages, that has electricity, transportation resources and, if possible, some basic medical facilities. In addition, the camp coordinator will also start the required paperwork to obtain permission from local government authorities, which can often be tedious and challenging.
Second Phase: In the second phase, Dr. Kallimel travels with a small team, including a nurse, to a few, carefully chosen and centrally-located villages in the targeted region. Over the course of a few days, she hosts screening camps in each of these villages. At these screening events, Dr. Kallimel and the medical team are able to see about 100-200 prospective patients per day. Only those with issues that can be addressed via general surgery and who are in need of urgent care are chosen. Babitha commented, “My heart always breaks into a hundred pieces when I have to say no to someone because we can only do so many surgeries in each camp. This is the hardest part, always.” At the conclusion of the screening process, about 70-100 high-need patients are selected.
Third Phase: In the third phase, the medical team performs surgeries on the selected patients. Extensive, behind-the-scenes preparation goes on before the final surgery camp happens. One or more Indian Christian medical doctors are invited to join each camp. The presence of an entirely South Asian medical team is important, due to growing persecution and legal restrictions for foreign medical practitioners. Additionally, South Asian tribes people connect better with physicians who share aspects of their heritage and language.
IET invites specific physicians based on the surgical cases presented in the villages. We often find certain, common surgical needs in each part of South Asia. In addition, our missionaries stay in touch with patients to help them complete any required medical tests that may be needed prior to surgery. Lots of behind the scenes work goes on at this time, to ensure proper permits are in place and all logistics are covered.
The surgical camp lasts for about 7 days. Babitha arrives a day ahead of time to make sure that the facility is ready. IET’s medical team members usually bring their own equipment and then, for the next 3-4 days, surgeries are completed. Each doctor does about 20 surgeries a day. Finally, during the last two days, Babitha stays back to provide post-operative care before the patients are released to go back to their homes.
Even though the medical camp ends here, the missionaries stay in touch with these patients to provide spiritual care and a way to connect with Babitha in case any medical questions arise. As one of IET’s missionaries in the village once said, “Christ’s healing—through medicine and prayer—is absolutely powerful and beautiful.”
