By NOEL MURPHY
HE MIGHT have undertaken 3000 operations on sick children in Third World countries, teaching doctors along the way, but Barwon Health doesn’t want him operating on its patients.
Professor Paddy Dewan has travelled overseas 100 times with the humanitarian medical body he started, Kind Cuts for Kids.
He’s worked in Gaza, Bangladesh, Kosovo, Albania, Vietnam, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Thailand, India and Papua New Guinea.
But he was sacked from working with Geelong’s peak public health body.
A former chairman of Victoria’s College of Surgeons, Prof Dewan set up Kind Cuts for Kids after operating on victims of a 1989 Russian train disaster that killed 800 people.
“It was in Chelyabinsk. Three-hundred more people were injured, 150 of them sent to each of two hospitals. I was there 10 days,” he told the Independent.
“That resulted in me returning to Australia and contacting people about how I might be involved in teaching in under-privileged countries. In 1993 I went to Bangladesh and New Guinea because I was selected by College of Surgeons after I put my hand up to teach.”
Prof Dewan makes about four trips a year, each for around two weeks. He receives no pay and loses money while working away from Australia.
He delivers a wide range of procedures on his travels, according to both his training, other available medical skills and access to resources.
“I’ve had training in orthopaedic plastic surgery and if no one is likely to be there I can assist with some basics to those specialities but the main thing I do is where there’s a lack of training in paediatrics or urology.
“In some countries it’s general surgery or helping in the hard basket with some sub-speciality. I’ve done ano-rectal anomalies where kids are born without a bottom or normal nerves to the lower part of the bowel.
“There’s a lot of re-do surgery because the training’s not been in place.
“It’s about empowering people in developing countries to do work for themselves. Like teaching a man to fish rather than giving him fish but we’re starting from a very low base where you’ve got to teach them to make hooks from bits of wire.”
“Kind Cuts for Kids was set up to facilitate other people as a solution in developing countries while developing skills at home.”
The non-government, not-for-profit body operates without an office or staff, relying on volunteers and the goodwill of surgeons around the world.
Prof Dewan told the Independent last month that he lost his job after complaining about another surgeon then alleging the reviewer handling his complaint had a conflict of interest.
The reviewer was the person who dismissed Prof Dewan after 16 years with Barwon Health, he said.
Prof Dewan called for a royal commission into the national health regulator and hospital administration decisions adversely affecting health professionals.
Barwon Health dismissed his claims, saying Prof Dewan was one of three surgeons it no longer required after deciding to use Royal Children’s Hospital for paediatric surgeries.
Geelong mother Tricia Connoley praised Prof Dewan’s work, saying he had cared for her daughter for 20 years, regularly going beyond expectations or professional duties.
“He’s a humanitarian who’s been treated inhumanely. It’s very unfair,” she told the Independent.
