HYDERABAD: "It's time to give back their debt", say 50-odd Nepal-educated city doctors, who are keen to go to the disaster-struck Himalayan nation and serve the people during their hour of crisis.

"Everything that I am today, I owe it to Nepal and its people, the country where I spent five years to pursue my MBBS from 1999 to 2004. I have already packed by bags and waiting for the government's permission to go to Nepal," said Dr K Satyanarayana Reddy, an ex-student of Nepal's College of Medical Sciences (CMS) and consultant orthopedician at Neelima Hospital, Erragadda.

Since the disaster struck Nepal, Dr Satyanarayana Reddy has been in touch with his college-mates in both Nepal and Hyderabad."We have already formed a trauma team comprising myself and two senior col leagues in the city, namely Dr Vinay, an alumnus of Kathmandu Institute of Medical Sciences (now a consultant plastic surgeon with KIMS Hospital) and Dr P Srikanth Reddy, a general surgeon from Karimnagar.We want to take a bigger team but waiting for government's clearance," added Dr Satyanarayana Reddy .

In fact, Dr P Srikanth Reddy , now a practicing general surgeon in Karimnagar, has the distinction of being in Nepal for 12 long years, first as a MBBS stu dent in CMS from 1998 to 2004, then as a post-graduate medical student at Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine from 2006 to 2009, before joining the CMS as a teacher in 2010. "I speak Nepali better than Telugu.We want to go back to Nepal and serve our other motherland that we fell in love with," said Dr Srikanth Reddy .

Incidentally, the CMS college in Nepal's Bharatpur area is a 1,600-bedded medical college-cum-hospital that is now the only sec ond tertiary care hospital after Manipal College of Medical Sciences, Pokhara that is within the 60 km radius of earthquake's epiccentre at Lamjung in Nepal, providing treatment to severally injured patients.

"CMS College is already in the forefront of providing treatment to the rescued survivors. We have already deployed seven medical teams to nearby villages in Bharatpur, providing emergency medial services including vital neurosurgeries and cardiothoracic surgeries free of cost", said Dr Vinayak K Pampati, director of CMS.

Interestingly, Dr Vinayak, who was in the city to arrange the safe homecoming of 60 first and secondyear MBBS students from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, said that there are about 60 Indian medicos in CMS colle ge who have stayed back to serve the locals in their hour of crisis voluntarily.