When Dr Hirji Adenwalla received the Joseph McCarthy Award instituted by The Smile Train at the Four Seasons Hall in New York last November, the appreciative audience included some of the top plastic surgeons in the world, notes The Hindu (November 13, 2006). Dr Joseph McCarthy, general editor of the 12-volume text, Plastic Surgery, considered the Bible of plastic surgeons, handed over the award in person, the report adds.
The most recent of many awards presented to the 76-year-old plastic surgeon who founded the Charles Pinto Centre for Cleft Lip and Palate at Trichur’s Jubilee Mission Hospital 10 years ago, it has made little difference except that the hospital he works in gets Rs 11 lakhs, in recognition of his "having demonstrated the highest ideals and noblest values in the medical profession and having made significant contribution to alleviate the suffering of disadvantaged children,” the report quotes the citation.
Adenwalla: ‘never look away’
The Smile Train has grown into the world’s largest cleft charity with hundreds of partners and programs in 52 of the world’s poorest countries in Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia since it was founded in New York in 1999. Describing Adenwalla as "a man on a mission (who has spent) decades helping children who have no place else to turn,” its website notes, "To know Adenwalla is to understand that no one, anywhere, is more emblematic of the word ‘selfless’…
"For more than 40 years, (he) has devoted his considerable skills to improving — some might say ‘salvaging’ — the lives of more than 7,000 underprivileged children by giving them the life-transforming ability to smile. Equally remarkable, Adenwalla has performed every one of these surgeries himself, free of charge, on a budget historically so modest that much of it has resulted from speaking fees. He typically spends his annual vacation making speeches to social service organizations in order to raise funds for the Centre.
"Since 2001, the first year that The Smile Train was privileged to provide the Charles Pinto Centre with funding, Adenwalla has performed cleft lip and palate repair on more than 2,000 children who would otherwise have never received it.”
Thousands of children suffer from un-repaired clefts in developing countries. Most cannot eat or speak properly. "Incidence of such cases is more among children from Muslim families in central and north Kerala possibly because of consanguineous marriages in the community,” Adenwalla told The Hindu, adding, "When a child’s cleft lip and palate are repaired it is like throwing a smile into a pond, to see ripples of smiles all over, the parents, the grandparents, the other siblings and other members of the family, all of them leave the hospital with smiles on their faces. This transformation is one of the most rewarding experiences in a surgeon’s life.”
His work has been supported by Simavi, a social service organization in the Netherlands, Rotary International and Smile Train. One of the senior-most surgeons in Kerala, he has trained countless juniors, including those sponsored by the British Association of Maxillo-Faxial Surgeons. His colleagues admire his "surgery skills, precision, dedication and indomitable energy,” the report says.
Adenwalla trained in plastic surgery under Charles Pinto and in paediatric surgery under Arthur de Sa, R. J. Katrak and Rustom Irani at Bombay’s Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children. Inspired by Albert Schweitzer, Adenwalla had wanted to go to Africa on medical missionary work. A priest who was a family friend convinced him that several parts of his own country needed such service, recalled Adenwalla. He came to the Jubilee Mission Hospital in Thrissur in 1959.
"Thrissur was a village then with aspirations of growing into a small town. The roads were clean and the air was pure. My wife and daughters, who wore skirts, aroused the curiosity of local residents. They thought we were Europeans… The facilities at Jubilee Mission were few in those days, but the spirit of service and commitment were exemplary. My wife was my ‘unofficial’ anesthetist many times,” Adenwalla said.
After being a general surgeon for several years, he chose to concentrate on plastic surgery 10 years ago. Having observed Kerala’s health sector for decades, he says that the spirit of service has declined.
Dismissing praise and deflecting all compliments, he revealed a part of what motivates him in a speech he made recently at a Smile Train celebration of 100,000 Smiles: "The lessons that we learn from human misery are to love…To never forget and to never, never look away.”
A. S. M.