| HISTORY OF NATIONAL ACADEMY
OF BURNS INDIA
Prof. J L Gupta, Patron, NABI
To focus attention on the hazards of fire and burn injuries, it is necessary to bring together people interested on removing the hazards and treating burn injuries. The Burn Associations of America, UK and some European nations were formed in early sixties. The International society Burn Injuries for (ISBI) was formed in 1965 in Edinburgh under the chairmanship of Mr. A B Wallace. Each national society met periodically usually annually to share knowledge and to evaluate the progress in the scientific field. The ISBI conducted international conferences once in four years. Accordingly, Professor N H Antia felt that we should have a forum and thus a Burn Association of India (BAI) was formed at JJ Group of hospitals, Bombay in 1972 with few founder members including myself. Dr. N H Antia was elected as our national representative to attend the ISBI meetings. However, very soon he suggested that the burns unit at Safdarjung Hospital was the largest in the country, doing excellent work and had heavy load and experience and thus he proposed the name of Dr J L Gupta as the national representative on ISBI.
The control of BAI was gradually taken over by Dr M H Keswani who continued to run it from and at Bombay as its permanent executive in spite of our repeated efforts to give it a national character of all India nature. We were very keen to see that the knowledge of burn care could flow quickly, easily, to all parts of the country not only as a source of encouragement and inspiration for the ambitious toiling burn professionals but also a force for taking message if safety in burn prevention in the country. We failed to achieve the desired objectives of and in those years viz.
- To disseminate knowledge in the country
- 2. To promote and coordinate research in burns in
scientific clinical and social aspects
- 3. To promote education
- 4. To active help where needed
- 5. To encourage cooperation 6. In general to sponsor,
promote and encourage all activities of any description
connected with the prevention, care, treatment and
rehabilitation of burn injuries.
In 1988, a national workshop in burn care was organized at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Chandigarh under the chairmanship of Prof C P Sawhney. It was attended by most surgeons working in the field of Burns in the country and detailed discussions were held. It was felt that since BAI has failed in its objective in spite of persuasion of all founder members, therefore we should have an alternative national forum where all aspects of burns could be discussed and planned. A very active and detailed discussions and consultations were held between Prof. J L Gupta, Prof Mathangi Ramakrishnan, Prof J K Sinha & Dr SP Bajaj, Prof S K Bhatnagar, Prof R K Keswani, Prof Siti Roy Choudhary, Prof Bilwani, Prof Madhuri Gore, DLN Prasad, Dr Swarna Arora and Dr Chadha and many others, to giver a shape to this idea. In 1990, Prof J L Gupta, convened a meeting at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. This Historic and significant meeting led to the birth of National Academy of Burns - India (NABI). Recognizing the services of Prof J L Gupta in the field of burns in the country, he was unanimously named as the Patron of NABI. Prof S.N Sharma was the choice for the founder President ship. Dr S P Bajaj of Baroda, became the founder Secretary, other office bearers were as follows:
Vice President - Dr J K Sinha - Varanasi, Dr J L Srivastava - New Delhi,
Joint Secretary - Dr J . Dua - J & K. Treasurer - Dr I N Tiwari - Delhi
Editor - Dr R B Ahuja - Delhi
|
The founder members
of the executive viz. the President, Secretary,
Treasurer and the Editor worked very hard to establish
the academy and burn midnight oil with dedication to
lay its sound footings.
The first Annual
conference of NABI was held in New Delhi in March 1993
at Maulana Azad Medical College and was inaugurated by
the former President of India Late Shri Giani Zail
Singh. It was a red letter in the history of burn
care in this country. A long cherished dream came true
for all those dedicated to the prevention and
management of burn injuries. The organization has come
a long way since then largely due to untiring efforts
of its founder members and professionals who dedicated
themselves to the cause of dissipating knowledge and
learning about the burn care in the country and
integrating all the levels of care ranging from common
man, technician, nursing staff, general practitioners,
general surgeons and burn specialists AIMS OF NATIONAL
ACADEMY OF BURNS:
-
To provide a forum to all general surgeons,
general practitioners, and paramedical personals
involved in the care and major share of burns in
the country, to exchange their views,
experience, and to discuss their problems with
peers. NABI has bridged the gap to get together
all professionals involved in burn care and help
to disseminate and advance the knowledge of burn
management on one platform.
-
To hold national and regional conferences, short
term refresher courses, CME programmes and live
demonstrations.
-
To offer traveling fellowships and awards to
young surgeons devoted to the treatment of
burns.
-
Through the Journal of Burns - the first journal
of its kind in the country has provided the
much-needed educational resource to the trainee
and the practicing surgeons and paramedical
workers involved in burn care and thus provide a
forum for scientific debate.
-
To develop National Registry of Burns to know
the exact load and epistemology in our vast
country.
-
To lay down essential standards of physical
facilities, requirements of equipment /
instruments, lay out plan and staffing to start
burn facilities and burn centers.
-
To evolve with consensus, the low cost treatment
of burn injuries within the existing resources
of the country with indigenous
methodology/research.
-
To take up national programme for prevention.
Prevention is better cure for any disease and
burn is no exception and more importantly, it
might turn our to be much economical in our
country than establishing new burn units.
-
To secure coordination between medical and other
scientific academies, associations, institutions
and Government medical and scientific
departments and services.
In the last decade, NABI has
fulfilled most of its objectives and is striving hard
to achieve in those that need persistent involvement.
Our membership is around 700 in India today and has been recognized as a
representative of the burn scene NABI has so far held
its annual conference as follows:
|
|
