A women empowered Department of Research at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital celebrated the International Women’s Day with oration from most renowned neurologist of the country, Padma Shri Dr (Prof) M.V. Padma Srivastava, Professor of Neurology, from All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Padma Shri Dr (Prof) M.V. Padma Srivastava, from AIIMS delivered today an oration titled, “Stroke care and its primary preventive methods in a poor resource settings in India” at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital”

Speaking at The oration Prof Padma said “Stroke is the second commonest cause of death in India. About 1,85,000 strokes occur every year in India with nearly one stroke every 40 seconds and one stroke death every 4 minutes.  According to Global Burden of Diseases (GBD), India bore most of burden of stroke with 68.6% incidence of stroke, 70.9 % stroke deaths and 77.7 Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost. These figures are alarming for India with many living poor resource settings. Another alarming and important finding of GBD 2010 stroke project is 5.2 million (31%) strikes were in children aged less than 20 years. The stroke burden is greater in India and more so among younger and middle aged people.

Inspite of these alarming figures, many Indian hospitals lack the necessary infrastructure and organization required to treat stroke patients quickly and efficiently and do not deliver adequate stroke care. The stroke services across the country especially in public sector hospitals is deficient in many aspects.”

Prof Padma added, “One of the solutions for this deficiency in rich and poor resource settings in India is to adopt Telestroke models in poor resource settings. Implementation of Telemedicine / Telestroke facilities is an important step for bridging the economically and geographically challenged and underprivileged sections of the society.”

This program also included inspirational talks by 3 distinguished faculty members of the hospital.

These included Dr Jayashree Sood, Chairperson, Institute of Anesthesiology, who spoke on how to maintain the balance between Work and Life especially for women, Prof Kusum Verma, Advisor Cytopathology spoke on her experiences mitigating professional challenges and Padma Bhushan Dr Neelam Kler, Chairperson of Department of Neonatology talked about her belief in the saying ‘Never say Never’.

This program was hosted by the department of Research chaired by Prof N.K. Ganguly, former director general ICMR and Chairperson Department of Research, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. The Department of Research at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital has a robust Ph.D program and has a state of art equipped laboratory with focus on basic and transational research in varied fields including neurobiology, cancer biology, stem cell biology, immunology, autoimmune and infectious diseases.