Coquitlam plastic surgeon Dr Kimit Rai has been tapped to join the Order of British Columbia for his decades of work treating some of the world’s poorest children and young adults suffering with facial deformities and serious burn injuries.
Celebrating its 30th year of existence, the Order of B.C. is considered the highest honour the province can extend to a long-term resident of British Columbia and is awarded to individuals who excel in any field of endeavour.
Rai had long worked as a surgeon, but back in the 1990s his life shifted when he joined a team from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons on a volunteer trip to the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to help children struggling with cleft lip and palate.
After they had finished their work, the governor of the neighbouring state of Tabasco congratulated them at a news conference. When Rai didn’t hear those congratulations extending to him and the three other Canadian nurses on the trip, he stood up in front of the news cameras and announced their presence.
“I walked up to the podium and gave [the governor] a handful of Canada pins,” he told The Tri-City News.
The next day, Rai’s photo was splashed over the local newspapers.
When he came back, the episode made him reflect on the fact that there was no such organization in Canada, and so with the help of a few friends, he began raising money and heading off to places like the Philippines, India and Cambodia.
That was over 20 years ago. Today, Operation Rainbow Canada has grown into what Rai calls a ‘huge organization,’ having operated on almost 3,000 children with facial deformities like cleft lip and cleft pallet, as well as burn contractures, a condition that restricts the movement of a patient as burn scar tissue is stretched taught.
“When you have a burn and it's not properly treated, the hand becomes deformed, or your arms deform or your neck deforms,” explained Rai. “We release the burned part [and] use skin grafting and patching up areas so that they can use the extremities and improve their facial appearances.”
In Cambodia, Rai and Operation Rainbow Canada they train local doctors in plastic surgery: how to operate on facial deformities and how to take care of serious burn injuries.
“Emotionally, it’s charging. It's a very, very good feeling.”
Rai’s work overseas has also gone beyond his operating on children with facial deformities. In 2014, he was part of a team of 30 surgeons, doctors and nurses that travelled to Ukraine to treat soldiers in a military hospital overwhelmed with casualties.
It wasn’t the first time he’d worked with the army. Born and raised in Malaysia to Afghan refugees, Rai spent a couple of years in the army before travelling to Vancouver to study plastic surgery at UBC and complete his residency as a surgeon in the burn and isolation ward at Vancouver General Hospital.
Nearly 45 years later, Rai has come to embrace a double life: as a plastic surgeon, he still does botox injections on perfectly healthy people looking to rejuvenate their body, but he has also now racked up over 30 missions overseas, treating some of the poorest and most desperate cases in the world.
“The day you fly back you find the children’s faces flashing across your mind when you’re sleeping. It still happens,” he said. “It’s a good feeling. It feels that you did something for someone. And hopefully they'll do something for someone else.”
At 78, Rai has pulled back on surgeries at his practice, but seems to have no intention of slowing down — he skis 20 to 25 times a year, will head out on a mission to India in October and another to Cambodia next February.
When asked what the appointment to the Order of B.C. means to the Coquitlam man, Rai points to his story — the people he has helped and the things he has learned along the way — as a chance for the next generation to step up.
“We’ll have a much better world if we support each other, no matter their ethnic background,” he said.
“I’m hoping the children see this and say, “Maybe I can be a good person to help somebody else.”
Over the last 30 years, 447 British Columbians have been appointed to the Order of British Columbia.
This year, Kimit Rai was among 209 British Columbians nominated for the distinction, and one of 15 who were ultimaltely appointed — others include a concert pianist, the executive director of the Vancouver Friendship Society and a world renowned fisheries scientist.
Rai and the 14 other appointees will be invested with the distinction on June 28 in a ceremony presided over by Lt. Gov. Janet Austin at Government House in Victoria.
