The Maharashtra Public Health Departments’ Civil and Subdistrict hospital has conducted free hip and knee joint replacement surgeries in rural hospitals in the districts and sub-districts of Maharashtra. The surgeries have been conducted under the 'Mahatma Jyoti Rao Phule Jan Arogya Yojana' by a team of orthopedic surgeons.

Dr Sachin Tadas, civil Surgeon at Wardha, and a team of orthopedic surgeons, Dr Rahul Bhoyar and Dr Ashish Shinde, at Hinganghat performed hip and knee surgeries successfully. Following this, each week, surgery will be done on at least one patient as per the waiting list of beneficiaries under different schemes of the government.

Since 2005, the Civil Hospital at Pune has performed 112 hip surgeries and 7 knee surgeries have been performed since 2013. The government will now strengthen systems to perform regular joint and hip surgeries in the district hospitals at Gadchiroli, Bhandara, Aurangabad and Nagpur.

Maharashtra has a large number of elderly patients affected with hip and knee joint problems due to osteoarthritis of knees, avascular necrosis (AVN) of hip, previous accidents, or sickle cell disease. The cost of surgeries in private hospitals is very high – unaffordable for majority of rural population, and these health conditions put patients in severe pain affecting their day-to-day life.

Additional chief secretary, public health, Dr Pradeep Vyas said that the department intends to continue with joint replacement surgery at districts in rural areas in the coming year so that the public health department can become a role model in public health for the replacement center in the country for beneficiaries at rural areas and maximum poor patients will get benefited.

State health director Dr Sadhana Tayade said that the government has given priority to non-communicable diseases and the package allotted for the state under the scheme gives the poor a privilege to use the quality services.