Babu's treatment in Australia
Babu, a 10 year old boy from Bangladesh arrived in Melbourne in February 2008 suffering from a large and growing benign tumour which was eating away part of his jawbone. Babu was accompanied here by Dr Badiul Alam, a Bangladeshi professor at the Dhaka department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The purpose of Dr Alam coming to Australia was to learn from the Australian surgeons who would treat Babu and take that knowledge back to his home country. Pre operation Babu was kindly hosted by Bangladeshi ex-patriates resident in Melbourne so this eased his transition to being in Australia.
Babu's operation finally took place in March and his surgeon, A/Professor Andrew Heggie was in charge. The removal of the tumour was a lenghty procedure involving taking a graft of live bone from his hip and using it to replace a section of bone removed from his jaw. In the end it was a total success.
Shortly after the operation an amazing thing happened - Babu was cleared to return home. A number of things had all gone in his favour. Despite a very poor background Babu was a fit 10 year old and his dad, Sattar, had followed the post operation procedures to the letter. In addition, Dr Badiul Alam, will admit him to his hospital in Dhaka in one of the 20 beds under his control. He will handle any post operative procedures or complications.
It is often the case that patients are required to stay in Australia for longer periods post their operation so that their surgeon can keep a check on progress. One recent case stayed for months as there were no facilities in the home country to treat the patient if anything went wrong.
There are likely to be significant flow on benefits for Bangladesh from this case. Firstly Dr Badiul Alam plans to complete additional training to be able to do the vascular side of similar operations in Bamgladesh. Secondly he is confident he will be able to get his government to fund the equipment needed to enable him to complete the operation free of charge to the "poor" in Bangladesh. Thirdly he has been involved with a number of hospitals and at least one surgeon has agreed to do a training trip to his country.
Dr Alam has said there was also a possibility of getting a surgeon exchange program set up.
The good news out of this case is that a potential three to four month post operation stay has been reduced to three to four weeks.
(You can see Babu after his operation with dad, Sattar, and Dr Badiul Alam).
