Operations Straight Spine was featured in the Project Summary section of Spine-Health.com
Project summary: Establishing a charitable mission project to provide spinal disease and deformity treatment for the poor and under-served in India.
Featured Spine-health.com Member: Dr. Jeffrey R. McConnell
Overview
Establishing a charitable mission project to provide spinal disease and deformity treatment for the poor and under-served in India was a dream shared by two orthopaedic spine surgeons:
- Jeffrey R. McConnell, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon working at the Pennsylvania Spine & Scoliosis Institute, OAA Orthopaedic Specialists, Allentown, PA, with over twenty years surgical experience, fourteen of those years as a specialist spine surgeon.
- Dr. Ujjwal K. Debnath, FRCS, MS (Ortho) an orthopaedic surgeon working in Cardiff, UK and former colleague of Dr. McConnell’s. Dr. Debnath has eleven years experience as a surgeon, with a special interest in spinal surgery.
In the U.S., Dr. McConnell established the Spine Education and Research Foundation to help fund the project, solicited donors, recruited skilled team members, and arranged for donated supplies and equipment.
While based in the UK, Dr. Debnath, native to India and Kolkata, navigated cultural, political and institutional barriers and tirelessly organized local support for the project through the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratisthan (RMSP), where years earlier he had completed some of his orthopaedic training.