A Jamalpur man drove 2,740 kilometers to save his wife who had incurred 71 percent burns and also contracted COVID-19. The man drove the distance to get the skin for her graft procedure.
According to the doctors, Misbah Kharawala is the first person in India to have burns because of the novel coronavirus. The husband Faisal Kharawala had a monumental challenge ahead of him. He had to travel for 1,370 kilometers to Belgaum’s skin bank to bring the graft material before his wife could get hit of sepsis. The state of Gujarat does not have a skin bank and Faisal had no option but to go to Karnataka to get a graft.
On the 9th of May, during the holy month of Ramzan, Misbah who is 23 years old suffered burns in her kitchen while she was preparing tea. Within seconds, she was fighting for her life. Despite making several calls to the hospital, all of them refused to admit her. After a long battle, they found a bed at the LG Hospital. Two days later, Misbah tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Misbah said,
“I was from Jamalpur so no hospital wanted to admit me. Finally, our constituency’s MLA Imran Khedawala managed to secure a bed at LG Hospital.”
According to Dr. Bhatia of the LG hospital,
“Usually we get skin from Mumbai through a col-chain process but the Mumbai skin bank could not help us. We then contacted an Indore hospital, but that had been converted into a COVID facility.”
Non-Stop Drive
But the doctor managed to contact the National Burns center which confirmed that skin was available at the Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital in Belgaum. On the 15th of June, Kharawala and his friends decided to go to Belgaum for driving nonstop. By 17 June, they were back. The police had also allowed a green passage for Kharawala. Dr. Bhatia said,
“The skin reached us at 7 am on June 17 and within one hour Misbah underwent her first surgery with combined application of autograft and homograft.”
Source: The Times of India
