Poor to benefit from hi-tech skin bank in city

Rotary Suncity, a city based club, is in the process of augmenting the skin bank at Right Hospitals, to create a state-of-theart facility, which will help burn victims get a new lease of life.Prof G. Balakrishna, founder of Right Hospitals, says more awareness is the need of the hour, as donated skin can help save the lives of patients with more than 40% burns. 

AP Kanna, former governor of Rotary district 3230, says,  they wanted to create this facility to  help the poorest of the poor. “To help us achieve this, Rotary Alabama has extended help while Rotary Foundation provided us funds to the tune of a little over Rs 1 crore to help set up the facility,” he explains. 

Prof.G.Balakrishnan, Consultant Plastic, Hand and Microsurgeon, says, “For burn patients with less than 40% burns, the patient’s skin itself is used to heal. However, if the patient has more than 40% burns, also known as critical burns, the focus is to restore the fluids lost through the burnt areas. Here, harvested skin is used to cover the burnt areas, in order to prevent onset of infection, relieve pain and to protect the patient from protein leak. The harvested skin can protect the patient for three weeks, by which time the patient recovers,” he explains. 

Taking this reporter on  a tour of the current facility, Prof Balakrishnan, points out that he had received requests for harvested skin from Hyderabad and Bengaluru as there is no such facility there. “Harvested skin is then preserved in 85% glycerol and stored at a temperate of 4-5 degree Celsius,” he adds. 

This medical expert rues that the awareness about skin donation is quite low. “Not many know that skin can be harvested from anyone above 18 and there is no upper age limit. We accept donations only from those patients who die due to natural causes. Patients who die of HIV, cancer or liver diseases are not eligible for skin donation,” says Prof Balakrishnan, who harvested the first skin donation on  March 23 last year.  “We hope to set up a burns speciality hospital, where patients can be treated at a nominal cost,” the plastic surgeon  concludes.