By GAURAV SRIVASTAVA

Last summer, Johns Hopkins student Gaurav Srivastava used funding from a Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship to gather material from 17 countries for a documentary titled Neurosurgery Around the World, capturing a global portrait of a constantly evolving medical profession.

He talks about his experiences travelling from the United States to India and Singapore - two of the 17 countries he visited - in this report.

ON MY journey around the world to 17 countries, I stayed in each country for about a week. India was the only exception.

I stayed there for two weeks because even though I was born and raised in the US, most of my relatives live in India.

I took my mother with me from the US on the trip because my father had recently died and she deserved to at least get her childhood dream of travelling around the world fulfilled - and who better with than her son. Plus, I love my mother so much and she definitely deserved it and much more for everything she has done for our family.

But back to my personal experiences in India. The week I arrived in Patna - my mother's hometown - there was a freak flood and the hospital I was supposed to visit and film neurosurgery in was flooded and they couldn't get patients in. So I filmed a relative of mine, Dr Amiya K. Lal, an orthopaedic surgeon, at his private practice which is literally attached to his house.

The unique thing I have to say about surgery there was the cauterisation method. Basically, they touch a live electrical wire to a hemostat to cauterise the blood vessel, which is, in principle, the same method used by a bipolar instrument - the norm for cauterisation.

I also visited the Apollo Private Hospital in New Delhi. There I shadowed Dr Rajendra Prasad, a neurosurgeon. Apollo Hospital was great, but some of its neurosurgical equipment was not as advanced as that in other countries such as the US, Japan and Germany, to name a few.

Other than the technology issue, the surgeon was fantastic and did a great job on the cases I witnessed. Another interesting thing I saw at Apollo Hospital was that a good percentage of the patients were African. These patients flew in all the way from Africa to get surgical procedures done in India.

I also visited a government hospital in India.

I cannot disclose the location because of confidentiality issues. I witnessed a simple emergency haemorrhage procedure done with very basic equipment. The neurosurgeon was able to open the skull with just a hand drill and barbed wire.

Various holes were made on the skull, then barbed wire was slipped underneath the skull and pulled up to get a clean cut between the two incisions. Then with basic surgical equipment, the neurosurgeon was able to pull out the haemorrhage. I did not have a chance to see the patient afterwards, but during the surgical procedure everything was okay.

The main insight I gained from this experience was that there is a huge difference in surgical care in India between government and private hospitals. It seems the less fortunate are restricted to the public hospitals, which are not as sterile and advanced as the private hospitals.

All in all, I loved India, but it was one of the less advanced countries in the neurosurgical field in terms of surgical equipment and staff qualification.

Singapore was one of my favourite stops.

Because Singapore is not that big, I was able to visit many sites in one week. Plus the country is very well organised. And it's so clean.

In Singapore I observed Dr Keith Goh, who is affiliated with three hospitals but was mainly stationed at East Shore Hospital. The week I came to film Dr Goh was the week word came from Nepal that one of the conjoined twins he had successfully separated had died.

So there was a lot of media attention on Dr Goh that week, keeping him busy with that issue. That meant I was not able to witness as many neurosurgical procedures as he would usually have carried out.

But the ones I witnessed and filmed were carried out in operating rooms that were very sterile, organised and technologically advanced. As a result, cases previously referred to as inoperable could be successfully undertaken.

My time in Singapore was one of the best experiences in my life, mainly because we were able to stay with our close relatives who took very good care of us.

My time with Dr Goh was fantastic as well, as he is a very polite and caring person and the people I met in Singapore were all very polite and friendly.

Whenever I had a chance to get out of the hospital, I visited many places including Sentosa, Jurong BirdPark and the Chinese Gardens.