By Bonny Osterhage
Photographs courtesy of Drs. Hasmukh and Shah
A father in El Salvador spent four days walking across the country, leading a donkey carrying his preschool-aged son for the chance to have the child's clubfoot corrected by the skilled surgeons of Operation Footprint. He reached the temporary clinic on its last day of operations before it closed for the year. But rather than turn him away and make him wait, the surgeons stayed to help this little boy and give him not just mobility, but a chance at a better life.
“Regardless of how tired we are, it is hard to say no,” said Dr. Bhavesh Shah, who – along with Dr. Neeta Hasmukh – are the only two podiatrists in Texas who are members of the Operation Footprint organization. "It only takes us about three hours to fix someone's life."
That is just one of the many heartwarming stories that define what Operation Footprint is about. Since 1976, this international non-profit has been helping disadvantaged children in El Salvador, Honduras, and India, giving them the surgeries they need to vastly improve their way of life. According to their website, the initiative began when a group of Southern California podiatrists organized under their former name, the Baja Project for Crippled Children, Inc., to treat children with congenital clubfoot in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, who had no other recourse for treatment. Over the years, the mission has grown into what it is today, with eight senior surgeons and four recently added junior surgeons donating their time and talents to help families needing life-changing podiatry procedures.
Stepping Up
Becoming part of Operation Footprint is a challenging task. It involves long hours, language barriers, and skill sets not often learned in medical school. There is no compensation other than the satisfaction that comes from knowing that you have made it possible for someone to enjoy a better way of life. Surgeons from all over the country apply to join, but only a few are accepted.
“It’s a hard selection process,” said Dr. Shah, who has been on the Operation Footprint board for 25 years and is one of the senior surgeons. Dr. Hasmukh, who was a new addition to the junior surgical team, echoed the sentiment, "We really have to prove ourselves."
That means demonstrating more than just exceptional surgical skills. According to Dr. Shah, applicants must have their hearts in the right place to give back and be amicable to different cultures and settings. There is no room for ego.
“They have to be humble because they are already excellent surgeons, but we will have to tell them to do it differently,” he explained, adding that even the most experienced junior surgeon will train seven to ten years before they operate alone.
That’s because many of the genetic conditions that the surgeons see in these countries are things they don’t typically have to address in the United States, where we have the technology and ability to immediately catch and treat things like extra digits, club feet, or inverted arches. In places like India, these conditions are not addressed at birth, and they become crippling as a child grows.
“These are things you just don’t see here,” said Dr. Hasmukh. “They are asterisks in a textbook for us, but these are extremely common conditions for the people we treat.”
To add to the challenges are language and cultural differences, and a lack of diagnostic equipment and technology. Without X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs, surgeons must make medical assessments the old-fashioned way: By watching the patient walk.
“This is part of what makes the experience so humbling,” said Dr. Shah. “We learn our limitations, but that’s what keeps us learning and keeps our hunger alive.”
Their Best Foot Forward
Both Drs. Shah and Hasmukh have personal ties to India. Being able to serve that community as part of Operation Footprint has been what Dr. Shah, who came to the States from India at age 11, called a "full circle moment."
“I am a third-generation philanthropist," he said, adding that his grandfather and aunt were healers.
Born in Trinidad, Dr. Hasmukh came from a family where philanthropic work was a way of life. Her father often traveled to India to aid in charitable causes, and her uncle was involved in the Eyes for Africa non-profit. When she came to the United States at nine years old, she had already seen firsthand the need for charitable endeavors in countries where the indigent population lacked access to even the most basic healthcare. After her first Operation Footprint mission in 2022, Dr. Hasmukh knew she had found her calling.
Dr. Hasmukh and Dr. Shah have worked together at the Total Podiatry clinic since 2019. They shut down their clinic three times per year to travel and work with the Operation Footprint missions. Each trip, or surgical brigade, is six days, during which the first two they spend seeing patients and assessing the most dire cases. The remaining four days are spent performing back-to-back three-hour surgeries; It’s a grueling process, especially considering they must turn some patients away.
“Saying no is the biggest challenge of this job,” said Dr. Shah, adding that in these blue-collar countries, earning a living is difficult-to-impossible without the ability to wear a shoe. “When you have to look into a family’s eyes and tell them you can’t fix something—and it has to be a quick no because you have so many patients to see in a day—that’s hard.”
But for every heart-breaking no, there is a groundbreaking success, like a 17-year-old boy in India who had a foot deformity so severe it caused him to walk on the tips of his toes. "It looked like he was wearing 7-inch stilettos," described Dr. Shah. Four years later, that boy was riding a bike. Today, he is planning his wedding.
The doctors fundraise to pay for the surgeries and the associated expenses. Everything else, including travel expenses, meals, and lodging, comes straight out of their own pockets. However, the global perspective they gain and are able to bring back to the States and to the patients they serve in their San Antonio clinic is unmatched.
“We understand the evolution of the pathology so much more because we work on both children and adults. That allows us to see how a condition evolves over different ages, and know when we should intervene aggressively versus not at all,” said Dr. Shah.
That perspective has earned Total Podiatry a reputation as a place to go for second and even third opinions before going under the knife.
"We aren't quick to do surgery unless it's truly needed because there are so many other things we can do to prevent it," Dr. Shah continued. "We push conservative therapy and education in our clinic because I want our patients to understand what can transpire based on what they decide to do for treatment. Surgery is not a quick fix; it is the longer way out."
Whether they’re treating patients here in San Antonio or abroad through Operation Footprint, these San Antonio doctors are committed to providing every patient with the highest standard of care. Through their tireless dedication to education and service, they’re making giant strides toward bettering people's lives, one step at a time.
