TWO India Doctors Listed in TIME for Contribution to Global Health

Abhay Bang and Rani Bang are the two Indian Doctors from Maharashtra has been listed in the Time Magazine’s list of Heroes of Global Health in solving problems in the field of health in developing countries. The two doctors have innovated basic programs, which has reduced the infant mortality rate in South Asia.

The duo are the founders of the Maharashtra-based Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) which has been working on reducing the high neonatal mortality rate in developing country. There new innovative ideas have fetched them a name along with 18 heroes in the Time’s magazine for their work in solving health problems in developing world.

SEARCH Program by the Indian doctors was presented with “The Sheshadri Gold Medal” by ICMR in India and was also honored by the Maharashtra Government in 1996 for outstanding contribution to community health.

SEARCH Program:

The Time magazine has announced that the duo doctors SEARCH Program (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health) which has been adopted in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and parts of South Africa, was able to bring down the child mortality rate to half at a cost of only $2.64 for each child saved. Abhay bang, Public health degree holder from Johns Hopkins University was motivated to work for the reduction of infant deaths in India after seeing a baby die due to non-availability of emergency medical treatment in tribal area, which made him start his SEARCH Program in Gadchiroli District in Maharashtra.

They found that basic knowledge and skills of the health worker with basic equipment like infant sleeping bags and abacus for counting every 10 heartbeats in infant would considerably reduce the infant death rate as they found 18 causes of infant death, including malnutrition and the strange habit of starvation among expectant tribal mothers who believe this makes the delivery easier, the couple started working to solve them. They found that simple improvement of skills and education to health workers will effectively reduce the reproductive and child health problems in developing countries.

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Philip Elmer-DeWitt, TIME science Editor said, “We were looking for people who had pioneered innovative ways to improve the health of poor people around the world and we have found 18 heroes contributing to health science from countries like Bolivia, China, Cambodia, Congo, Honduras, Kenya, Nepal, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Swaziland, Britain and the US. We found to our surprise, wherever we looked, we found them - from an ex-motorbike racer who dispatched hundreds of sidecar-equipped motorcycles across Africa for use as mini-ambulances to a Thai economist who championed condom use among Bangkok sex workers and headed off what could have been a devastating outbreak of HIV/AIDS”.

Source: IANS