Achievers
Books
Business
Calendar
Community
Controversy
Cuisine
Eateries
Education
Enterprise
Faith
Good Samaritans
Health
Infotech
Media
Memories
Movies
News Archives
Opinion
Specials
The Arts

Dr Do More

Firdaus Ali

"Balance and moderation in all things is the key to good health," says Dr Ranjit Chandra, Canada's ace medicine man, who has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in medicine (1984 and 1986). The words reflect both his personal philosophy and the essence of the medical research on which his fame rests.

An officer of the Order of Canada, holder of five honorary doctorates and a visiting professor for major universities spread across four sub-continents, Dr Chandra is a world leader in the field of medicine.

He also heads the World Health Organization's only centre for nutritional immunology in St. John's, Canada. Winner of the prestigious Hind Rattan, an award specifically for Indian expatriates who continue to contribute to their homeland, he has always been there to help his motherland.

But behind all these laurels is a man simple at heart. A humanitarian, who, believes in the age-old Indian philosophy of karma, never misses a badminton game, meditates regularly and is bitten hard by the travel bug.

But whatever he does, medicine and the love for humanity are at the centre of it all.

Dr Chandra was in the news recently for making Canadians and other western countries aware of the plight of the cyclone victims in Orissa. The doctor happened to tour Orissa while on a visit to India in December 1999 and witnessed the havoc caused by the cyclone. He returned to Canada and got busy arranging fund-raising events to generate monetary and medical aid for the Orissa victims.

"I was touched by their plight," he says.

He revisited India in March this year to provide the victims with the much-needed humanitarian and medical aid.

"My desire to become a doctor was born while growing up in India. My father, late Hukam Chandra, was a doctor and practiced near our home in the state of Punjab. I would spend hours just watching him perform surgeries. The sight of blood never scared me. A few years later my mother succumbed to a rare disease and this only made my resolve to enter the medical field stronger," recalls Chandra.

If India brings back childhood memories, it also reminds him of the horrors of 1947.

"I was eight when my family, like countless others, was caught in the Partition crossfire. We were forced to flee our village as it was soon to become a part of Pakistan. Amid the bloody riots we managed to join a caravan of three to four buses heading towards Ludhiana, but were soon surrounded by blood-thirsty rioters.

"They threatened to kill us, when suddenly one of them recognized my father who had treated the man's ailing sister. He told us to get off the bus and he would spare our family. My father told him that the entire troupe of buses was his family."

Chandra graduated from the Khalsa College in Amritsar and studied medicine at the Amritsar Medical College. He later completed his doctorate degree at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, where he also worked for a few years as a paediatrician.

As a 22-year-old medical student in India, he and a colleague discovered an ailment affecting the lungs, heart and sinuses, which still bears their names.

In 1974 the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada offered him university professorship and directorship of a new clinical immunology service. Chandra moved to Canada, where he continued the research he had started in India.

Presently heading the immunology and allergy department at the Charles Janeway Child Health Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, he is one of the world's foremost paediatrician and specialist.

The institute under Dr Chandra's guidance was the first to establish a direct link between nutritional deficiencies and immune system responses. His research, focused on how malnutrition in mothers leads to immune deficiencies in their children and lowers immune resistance won enough trophies and citations to fill his modest office in St. John's.

His team is now working on establishing a direct link between nutrition and the HIV virus.

Life in Canada was everything he had hoped for and more, when he first came to the country in 1974. International honours have led to visiting professorships at John's Hopkins University in Baltimore, New York Medical College and at different medical schools in Beijing, Santiago and Naples.

However, he feels that in his profession one cannot belong to any particular country or zone. "I see myself as a global citizen and want to help all people, irrespective of their nationality," adds Dr Chandra.

For this he chose to be a member of the 30-year-old, 1999 Nobel Prize winning group, 'Doctors Without Borders.' The group is spread across 80 countries and comprises 2,000 volunteers of 45 nationalities.

"As a member of Doctors Without Borders, my job is to provide emergency relief and to prevent the spread of diseases such as typhoid and cholera," says the 61-year-old immunologist.

On any normal working day, Chandra has his hands full tending to patients at the hospital, visiting the World Health Organization Centre for Nutritional Immunology and editing international scholarly journals. He plans to add to the list of 20 scientific books he has authored so far.

Although he has been a Canadian citizen for many years, Dr Chandra continues to maintain strong emotional ties with India. "I feel very Indian at heart and make it a point to visit India at least twice a year."

One day he would like to sit down and write his own autobiography. "I have a lot of material for it and lots of pictures to go with the book. My dad, who was a non-drinker, said he would have his first sip of champagne if I won the Nobel Prize. While that did not happen, there are so many other things I'd like to do. One of them is to permanently settle down in India. But not until I have finished the work I have started in Canada...."

Previous: Intolerance of Diversity a Growing Concern

Tell us what you think of this report