It was sheer luck of the eight-month pregnant Kuljeet Kaur who was travelling by a Toronto-bound Air India flight, to have a veteran physician on board. The lady suddenly developed labor pains and needed immediate medical attention above 36,000 feet, it was a co passenger Dr Balvinder Singh Ahuja, who came up to her distress call, announced on the in flight radio. He performed an emergency delivery turning a passenger cabin into a birthing room within minutes and improvising with makeshift instruments. Though there was an oncologist on board, it was Dr. Ahuja who came forward to help the ailing lady.

Dr. Ahuja said even before I could volunteer, the crew had made all the necessary arrangements and created a space for Kuljeet in the tail of the aircraft. We were flying over Kazakhsthan when the baby, Aakash Leen Kaur was delivered. The entire procedure took about 30-35 minutes. The only medical equipment on board was a first-aid box. We used a pair of scissors, which we sterilized with some Scotch. Luckily, the crewmembers also found some injections, which we used during delivery. Passengers gave him a standing ovation, the Air India crew gave him a bottle of Scotch and the new father visited him at his home and gave him a box of sweets.

Like most foreign-trained doctors, Dr. Ahuja must be recertified before he can practice, in Canada. Hence for the past six months in Toronto, however, Dr. Ahuja has been learning to drive a truck, convinced it was too difficult a process to practice as a foreign-trained doctor in Canada. He said I’m not closing that door completely but as of now I’m focusing on trucking because I have a family and I need money. Dr. Ahuja runs a childcare hospital at Hoshiarpur in Punjab, and he frequently travels to India to look into the affairs of the clinic.