Humanitarian Engagement

The Düsseldorf surgeon Karl Schuhmann recently travelled to India and spent two weeks operating in a hospital in Bangalore. "I can be certain that the help reaches exactly where it is urgently needed," says the physician, who runs a practice in Düsseldorf and is a chief physician at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus in Hattingen.

The organisation Interplast had arranged the trip with the support of volunteer businesspeople in Bangalore. Schuhmann found an operating theatre with two operating tables as well as a ward. During the nearly two weeks, 55 patients were treated and 76 operations were performed.

It was not the first time that the Düsseldorf physician had embarked on a trip to India. "Plastic surgery means considerably more to me than purely cosmetic surgery," says Schuhmann. "That becomes more than clear during his missions in India. There it is not about aesthetic procedures, but about helping people who have been severely disfigured by burns or acid attacks, who have to endure extreme restrictions in movement and pain, and giving them a renewed will to live."

He intends to continue his commitment to humanitarian aid in the future.

Article in the Rheinische Post