Don’t cry for me Argentina
The little-known story of the unknown Argentinian cardiac surgeon, who devised the world's most famous surgery - the cardiac, or coronary bypass.
Sanjay Nagral
Dec 4, 2020, Mumbai Mirror
I grew up playing only cricket. What else do you expect for a kid growing up in the ’70s in central Mumbai and attending a quintessential Maharashtrian school? I thought of football as a game played only in convent schools. It was only later that it dawned on me that India was a world champion in a game played in only eight countries; and that the real global game was football.
Ithink my interest in football started in 1982 when the World Cup was telecast live. I was in medical college and the idea of a doctor captaining the Brazilian team was captivating. With his cool, intense manner and courageous politics, Socrates was a hero of my youth.
Then came Maradona. Though perhaps not as intense as Socrates, he shared that Latino flair and courage. Like Socrates, when this short beguiling footballer with a chequered after life, passed away last week, the entire world mourned.
But this column is not on Maradona. Reflecting on Maradona’s life reminded me of another Argentinian lesser known to us in India who played football but only as a kid. He went on to become one of the world’s most prominent and innovative cardiac surgeons. The operation he devised is indeed famous in India; the cardiac or coronary bypass. A procedure that has saved thousands of lives across the world.
Rene Favaloro was born in 1923. The lone member of his family to have university education was a doctor uncle and Rene followed his path. After graduating from medical school, he agreed to work as a country surgeon in an impoverished village. There he saw several patients with heart disease. Restless to know more, he made his way to Cleveland Clinic in Atlanta where, despite lacking credentials, he was taken on as an apprentice in the heart centre.
Dr F Mason Sones, considered the father of coronary angiography, had the largest collection of angiograms in the United States. Every day, after working in the operating room, Favaloro would spend reviewing the coronary angiograms and studying coronary arteries and their relation with the cardiac muscle.
Favaloro began to think of using avein from the leg, for bypassing the blocked coronary artery. Previously, this vein had been used for patch reconstruction of occluded arteries, but the technique had a high rate of blockage and was discontinued. He took a part of the vein from the leg, joined one end to the aorta and then like a driver who uses a side road to go around a traffic jam, he attached the other end to the artery beyond the blockage. Though some other surgeons had attempted it before, Favaloro was the first to report it in a medical journal. In one year, the clinic performed 170 procedures. Soon, it became globally accepted.
Favaloro received numerous honours. But he took pains not to overstate his accomplishment, emphasising that he had not acted alone.
Despite a lot of well-paid offers from some of the most prestigious US institutions, in 1971 Favaloro decided to return to Argentina, four years after he had described coronary bypass. When asked why, he said that he thought all doctors in Latin America should be forced to work among the poor. “They would be able to see the combination of dirt and fumes. The people have only one room where they cook, live, make love, have their children and eat.”
After returning, he started raising money for a $ 55 million heart clinic. After it was completed in the early ’90s, he treated thousands of patients, often for no charge, and trained hundreds of surgeons. He established the Favaloro Institute for Research and Education. This was a non-profit institution that mainly supported basic research, a very rare entity in South America. He received requests to run for president, but refused. He was a member of a commission to investigate the disappearance of 6,000 Argentines under the military dictatorship.
In his later life, his institute started facing financial difficulties. Perhaps his ambition had made him blind to economic realities. The finances of his foundation became grim. Favaloro requested the health minister and President for financial help. In a letter to La Nacion newspaper, he said other hospitals and state-owned medical centres owed the foundation $ 18 million. “I am going through the saddest period of my life,” he wrote. “In the most recent times, I have been turned into a beggar.” In 2000, his body was found in his apartment with a gunshot wound to his chest and a gun nearby. Argentina mourned. As they mourned for Maradona.
Latin Americans are a passionate people. This can make them reckless. This reflects in their history, football, politics and culture. Whether it was Che Guevara, Favaloro or Maradona, it was the dreamer in them that pushed them to do what they did with their life. And in their death, which they consciously and impulsively embraced.
When Madonna in the Hollywood production, or Sharon Prabhakar on the Mumbai stage, sang ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ in ‘Evita’, an evocative tribute to the enigmatic Eva Peron, they were also singing for people like them.