BANGALORE, Oct 20: Some 200 poor children with deformed limbs have come to Bangalore in the hope of learning to walk, skip and jump like their friends. 

Making them realize their dream will be 30 top surgeons from India, UK and USA who will conduct 30 surgeries a day. All this free of cost.

The Sparsh Hospital at the health city came alive on Monday when doctors began their week-long operations. The foreign specialists had flown down at their own cost bringing with them their medical equipment. Some of the complex challenging musculoskeletal abnormalities that will be tackled are: congenital pseudoarthrosis of the tibia, club foot, cerebral palsy, congenital dislocation of hips and gross deformity correction.

Named Sparsh Vachana, the promise of a better life, the initiative is inspired by Lakshmi Tatma’s story. “We had successfully operated on an ischiopagus conjoined twin called Lakshmi Tatma in Nov 2007. The entire cost of the treatment was written off by the charitable wing of the hospital, SPARSH Foundation. Since then, we have had a large number of children come to us from very humble background with complex problems. So we embarked on a massive operation like this,’’ chairman and chief orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Sharan Patil, said.

From recitation of the inaugural song to lighting the lamp, some of the children undergoing surgery participated in the launch. The ambience at the hospital was made child-friendly with coloured walls and toys on the corridors.