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.