By: Chaitali Kodam | Date - 6-7th April 2019

We, 16 volunteers of Switch India had a golden opportunity to be a part of its medical educational camp.

Wherein, on 5th and 6th of April, we visited the NATIONAL BURNS CENTRE located at Airoli, a 50 bedded holistic specialized center of excellence for research, training, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation; which is done related to burns. The camp included visiting the wards, the skin bank, and the operation theatre.

The wards showed us extremes of cases, Right from a five-year sweet little girl to a forty year old woman. From a sister who burnt herself trying to save her brother to an acid victim wife.

We were all shocked, terrified after listening to the stories of these REAL HEROES and their hardships and challenges but were also happy to see their rehabilitation, hope, and strong will power. What better example could we get of metamorphis if it's not this.

We proudly can say that we visited the first skin bank in India, started in 2009.

We were informed about the importance of skin donation, a brief overview of skin harvesting, preservation of skin and about the ongoing investigations in skin grafting.

Further wearing our scrubs and ready we entered the operation theatre for the very first time for some or second for others.

The environment in the Operation theatre cannot be compared to anything less than a battlefield. With an army of senior doctors, anesthesiologist, residents, nurses, etc, preparing all their arrangements ready and on their toe.

We saw surgeries proceeding with intubation till the extubation process. Some of the surgeries we have seen were the neck contracture, microstomia, release of columella, hypertrophic scar of right cheek. Thank you switch India for this learning experience.