Perth team changes lives in Sri Lanka
The dingy wards of Batticoloa Hospital in Sri Lanka's poor and war-devastated east are a far cry from Australia's well-equipped facilities.
A 14-year-old girl lies with horrific scarring and deformity from burns to 30 per cent of her body most likely from self-immolation.
Her chin is fused to her chest by burnt skin contracting. Unable to chew, she weighs a skeletal 19kg.
Because of her suffering and that of many others in this destitute region still reeling from civil war that ended in 2009, three Perth medics went there.
Plastic surgeon James Sav-undra, anaesthetist Lochi De Mel and theatre nurse Gill Bathgate, all from St John of God Hospital in Perth, took annual or unpaid leave to do the job they do every day.
Except in Sri Lanka, there is more suffering, more complex deformities, fewer facilities and more people desperately needing help.
The trio has just returned from a two-week stint when they operated on 55 people, transforming many lives.
With three medics from the Eastern States, the team volunteers for not-for-profit Interplast, which places Australian medical professionals in Third World countries.
Mr Savundra said the girl was burnt a year ago but her parents took her out of the hospital in February before surgery for traditional Hindu ayurvedic medicine.
But after hearing the Australians were coming, they took her back.
"There's a lot of self-immolation," Mr Savundra said.
"It's a cultural thing where women douse themselves with kerosene to light themselves up in front of their parents or partners. We saw 15 burns like this there."
The surgery will help her to move and eat.
Another operation was the first of its kind in the region - on an 11-year-old who faced losing his foot after a motorcycle accident.
"We put tissue from his thigh on to his ankle using microvascular techniques, so we basically connected up the blood vessels," Mr Savundra said. "That's a very fancy operation anywhere."
Mr Savundra, 45, who has three children under 10, has spent eight weeks on unpaid leave overseas this year.
He said though it could be difficult to spend so much time away, his family understood how important it was.
Ms Bathgate, 52, made three trips this year and has volunteered for Interplast since 2002.
"I've probably seen things that I would never see (in Australia) because they are dealt with at a young age," she said. "You just don't see those deformities. There is a lot more suffering there."
For Mr De Mel, who immigrated from Sri Lanka eight years ago, it was a chance to work in an area he could not go during the war because of his ethnicity. "It had a lot of meaning for me to go back to my home country," he said.
