Windsor, Ontario, Oct 18: Doctors Srinivas Chakravarthi and Siva Sriharan may never get rich staying in this small auto-producing city, little more than a stone’s throw from downtown Detroit, but they can eat all the hamburgers, ribs and potato skins they want for the rest of their lives at Casey’s Bar and Grill. For the next year, the Indian and Sri Lankan immigrant, respectively, can also get their hair cut free at the Touch of Class beauty salon, and lease a Pontiac Grand Am without charge from a dealer in nearby Essex.

Patients have pledged free house repairs and landscaping for their properties, and nurses have teased them with offers of free massages. All Chakravarthi and Sriharan have to do is continue practising medicine in Windsor.
Residents started proffering gifts when rumours leaked out of Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital a few weeks ago that the two neurosurgeons—of the four serving the city—were toying with moving their practice to the United States.
‘‘It’s the system that is pushing us out,’’ says Chakravarthi, a 53-year-old who came to Canada from India. Sriharan, 38, backs him up. ‘‘It’s not about the money...We can’t do our job properly with operating room time so extremely limited here.’’ Forced to compete for operating room with other surgeons, he says that he and his colleague can only complete one or two operations on some days, meaning that patients with non-emergency cases can go months or even years before completing necessary treatment.
‘‘Scarce resources are simply not being spent properly,’’ Sriharan adds, citing a shortage of nurses and anesthesiologists in the hospital where the single microscope available is old and breaking down. The two surgeons are sharply critical of Canada’s health care system, which is driven by government-financed insurance for all, but increasingly rations service due to various technological and personnel shortages. Both doctors say they are also fed up with a two-tier medical system in which those with connections go to the head of the line for surgery.
John O’Kane, 46, the owner of Casey’s Bar and Grill, is leading the local crusade to keep the two neurosurgeons in Windsor. His generous offer of free food is rooted in personal experience; he is convinced that superior surgery performed on him last year by Sriharan to remove a broken piece of a spinal disc rubbing against a sciatic nerve is the reason he can again play ice hockey and tennis.
The grassroots upsurge of offers and almost daily letters to the editor published in the local newspaper urging the surgeons to stay has not gone unnoticed by local politicians. Windsor’s Mayor Mike D. Hurst has sped up a physician recruitment and retention initiative to combat local shortages of medical manpower.