Walk into any major hospital in Srinagar on any given morning. You will see the same scene. Ten to twenty people are lined up, all asking for one thing: surgery to remove their gallbladder.Here is the strange part. Most of them have no pain, no vomiting, no serious symptoms. They found out they have gallstones by accident—during a routine ultrasound for some other problem. Someone told them, “You have stones,” and now they cannot rest until those stones are out.I understand the fear. We have all heard stories. Gallstones can lead to cancer. But let me tell you what is really happening in our operation theatres right now.

The Hard Reality of Our Surgery ListsA good surgical team can only do about five gallbladder operations in a single day. That is the limit. We have only so many beds, so many hours of anaesthesia, so many nurses.Now do the math. If ten to twenty people come asking for surgery every day, and we can only do five, who gets left behind?The answer is heart breaking. The people who really need surgery—those with huge stones blocking their bile duct, those with repeated attacks of pancreatitis, those whose gallbladders are already infected and swollen—are being pushed to the back of the line. They wait for weeks. Sometimes they get sicker while waiting. All because the........

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