"News Flash" .

Changes to University Requirements on Health and Safety mean that the Chitrakoot Charity can no longer accept student elective visits. See under Student Electives.

Visits to Chitrakoot

By Mid-April we will be in a position to discuss available dates for visits for volunteers and dental and medical students. We apologize for the delay in contacting those persons who have already been in touch but this was caused by the requirements of "duty of care" to visitors which have now been defined. We now need you to contact David Hutchinson by email at david.hutchinson2@virgin.net for further details and discussion of requirements.

Virgin Atlantic "Change for Children" funding Makes Facial Cleft Surgery a reality in Chitrakoot.

At the end of October a team led by Oliver Fenton, Plastic Surgeon, visited Chitrakoot to make a start on treating the many child and young adult facial clefts. This was the first time the operating theatre in the Deenadayal Research Institute had been used and getting it up and running was in itself a major achievement. New equipment had to unpacked, understood and readied for use. Everyone entered into the spirit of commissioning with great results. We even managed to locate consumables (gloves, sutures and drugs) donated by the Nuffield Hospital in Leeds and lost in transit. They were located one hundred and forty miles away and deliverd over night.

The first day's operating was carried out under local anaesthetic with intravenous sedation given by Naresh Sharma and Oliver Fenton teaching the two resident dental surgeons. This allowed problems to be ironed out so that on the second day young children could be treated under general anaesthetic, provided by anaesthetists from Satna. These colleagues were absolutely superb giving some of the best anaesthetics ever seen, using the minimum of equipment and drugs. Further operations were carried out on subsequent days using local anaesthesia and sedation. In all seventeen patients were treated with excellent results and no problems. They were all thrilled with the results and their happiness and gratitude made it all worthwhile.

While this new venture was in progress some of the team went out to the villages seeing over a hundred patients each day. The base Dental unit kept running screening the cases for the next operating session in March. There are now about forty booked , many quite difficult and needing bone grafts. Various burn revisions, odd lumps and anything else that turns will also be included, since we will have two surgical teams working side by side, to cope with the numbers. A big thank you to all our team who worked so hard.

After a hard day's work...

Blessings from the Guru..

Mr Vajpayee then Prime Minister visited Chitrakoot in 2003.

Mr president visited Chitrakoot in 2006 and is being shown around by Dr Manu Singal one of the dentists who works in our clinic.

Bachchans paid a visit to Chitrakoot in late December 2007. They came on a private visit to pay homage to the late Mrs Teji Bachchan, mother of Amitabah Bachchan. They came in four helicopters that landed in Arogyadam.

The Bachchan family was welcomed by Dr Naresh Sharma, vice chairman of DRI and Mrs Shashi Sharma and their daughter Geeta.

The Bachchans went of to Ram Ghat first to carry out their mothers wishes in the presence of various holy men from Chitrakoot. On their way back they spent some time in Arogyadam where Naresh Sharma acquainted them of our activities and also relayed condolences to the Bachchan family. Abishek Bachchan and Ashwariya Rai were also present. Amitabah Bachchan said to the people of Chitrakoot that he would like to return to Chitrakoot one day soon."

Volunteers

We are getting an increasing number of offers of help on site and will be arranging a meeting of all concerned at the beginning of next year to organise the best use of talents.

We continue to enjoy help with used and time expired equipment from local sources but we are conscious of the fact that capital expenditure has ongoing revenue consequences so we will be organising a number of events next year to keep up the revenue stream. See Newsletter for details.

Information leaflets are in preparation and will be available on request through the "How to Contact Us" link.