NEW DELHI: On March 19, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai put her best face forward. The Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban joined a UK school after numerous reconstructive surgeries. However, Indian surgeons have of late been tending more than ever before to victims of terror from across the world’s conflict zones, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, Somalia or Sudan and Nigeria.

What’s more, for foreign patients India is a good destination for these operations as the surgery costs are one-fifth that in the US or Europe.

Most such doctors here say they get 2-3 such cases a month, piecing together mangled cheeks, torn limbs and gaping stomachs – like Ajmal, 50, from Afghanistan. His face is a mass of craters, he walks with a stick and his eyes are shuttered behind thick goggles. “I was shot by the Taliban three years back. The bullet whizzed from behind my ear and exploded in my nose, tearing away a part of my face. I was operated in my country, but it didn’t help. So I came to Delhi,” he says. His injuries will be treated here by transplanting tissue from the thigh to his face and putting titanium plates to support a damaged eye.

Terror attacks, too, are handled by these doctors. Capt Ron Nagar , once Kingfisher’s seniormost pilot, remembers the 2011 bomb blast at Delhi high court where he sustained severe leg and eye injuries. “I was taken to a government hospital where doctors wanted to amputate my foot. But my family got me admitted to a private hospital where reconstructive surgeons saved my eye and leg.”

Most of the injuries doctors get are gunshot wounds and burns caused by blasts. Dr Sunil Choudhary, director, Aesthetic & Reconstructive Surgery , Max Healthcare, says, “Bullets cause severe damage due to direct impact, the sonic boom they create and heat generated. Missiles shatter tissues like a supersonic jet shatters windows. Bombs, on the other hand, have rusted pieces of metal leading to faster infection, causing gangrene or septicemia.”

The most heart-rending cases are of kids with amputations. “Most have stepped on landmines and hobble on crutches,” says Dr Ajaya Kashyap, senior consultant, cosmetology, Fortis La Femme. “Burn cases are painful, too, as the skin contracts and sticks together, restricting limb movement.”

Surgeons painstakingly remove dead tissue and irrigate wounds with saline. Then reconstruction is done using skin grafts, metal plates for fractures, special nano silver burn dressings and microsurgery. These operations can take 8-9 hours. But for doctors there’s no bigger high than seeing these patients walking or eating normally.

As for Nagar, his first question to his doctor was: “Will I be able to fly again?” He did. Nagar passed all his pilot medicals and today can even run easily.

