Bedridden for a year, walking into her own recovery: a Tripura team replaced Shefali's tumour-damaged knee — free of charge

Shefali Tripura, 33, from Karbook in South Tripura, India, had spent a year bedridden: an aggressive giant cell tumour, 10 by 8 centimetres, was destroying her left knee. Such surgery is rare in Tripura — patients are usually sent to distant metropolitan hospitals, and privately it would cost ₹5–6 lakh (about $5,300–$6,300). Instead, on October 15 a team at AGMC and GBP Hospital in Agartala, led by joint replacement surgeon Dr Sayantan Saha with Dr Swarup Sarkar, removed the tumour and rebuilt her knee with a megaprosthesis — a large engineered replacement — in a three-hour operation. The treatment was provided completely free under India's Ayushman Bharat health-insurance programme for low-income families. Shefali recovered well and went home on October 21.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program