Vivekananda Jha: Need to fix the system to ensure no one is excluded from the Right to Health

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By Neena Bhandari

A prolonged brush with the healthcare system during his high school years steered Vivekananda Jha towards medicine. Multiple visits to the doctors, uncertain diagnosis, rudimentary care and the prolonged physical, mental and financial stress of ailment, made him determined to pursue medicine as a career.

He grew up in Bihar, and graduated from the Patna Medical College, before moving to the prestigious Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh to do his post-graduation in Internal Medicine and Nephrology.

“Nephrology offered the possibility of extending a patient’s life even after they had developed advanced end-stage organ failure by providing them with dialysis or kidney transplantation, whereas with other organs that was not the case in the late 1980’s”, says Dr Jha, who hails from a family of teachers, and so he is the only doctor “on-call” in their entire extended family.

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Jeyaraj Pandian: The silent epidemic of Stroke needs attention to prevent long-term disabilities

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By Neena Bhandari

Since childhood Jeyaraj Pandian aspired to be a doctor. His paternal grandfather was a Legalised Medical Practitioner, as they were called before India’s independence. Whenever, he visited his ancestral home Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, his grandma would show him his grandfather’s medical kit, intact with a stethoscope, syringes and basic first aid equipment, which was securely kept as a treasured heirloom.

He chose to follow his childhood passion and enrolled in Tirunelveli Medical College (Madurai Kamaraj University), Tamil Nadu. He then completed his residency from the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Ludhiana [Punjab] and did his post-graduation in Internal Medicine. It was while doing his Master’s that he did a thesis in Neurology and that really kindled his interest in the discipline.

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D Praveen: Need technology-based innovations to address inequities in treating chronic diseases

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By Neena Bhandari

Born in a middle-class family in Berhampur in Ganjam district of Orissa, a state that is still underdeveloped in the fields of health and education, the obvious option for Dr D Praveen was to try and get into medicine or engineering. At that time, the state had only three Government medical colleges making it very competitive, but he persevered and got admission in the Maharaja Krishna Chandra Gajapati (MKCG) Medical College.

“During my internship, I had a three-month rural posting in a primary health care [PHC] facility. It opened my eyes and showed the stark difference between health facilities in urban and rural areas. The infrastructure was in a state of disrepair, there were no doctors, and healthcare workers would seldom show up. People were dying of snakebites and accidental poisoning. I was motivated to work towards changing the health of the community at large”, says Dr Praveen, who heads the Institute’s Primary Health Care Research based in Hyderabad.

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