Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
Using the best of tech, tradition to save lives
For Dr Vishwajeet Kumar, who has studied and brought out the best of technology and tradition to save lives by preventing deaths of newborn, mothers are not recipients or beneficiaries but the ones who can do best for their children so we have to look upon them as provider in the healthcare system.
In Uttar Pradesh, where population is always more than the resources and accessibility is a big question, Dr Singh used technology to improve conditions. His motto in life has been to restore the dignity and safety of childbirth.
The youngest of six brothers born to a farmer mother in a village in Bihar, Dr Kumar revered his mother as a goddess. Despite having only primary education, she toiled often in tattered sarees, leading a life of struggle and sacrifice – having to stay away from her children to ensure that each of them could receive a good education.
With the image of his mother firmly etched in his mind, Dr Kumar has always considered women as a superior sub-species endowed with the divine abilities to create and nurture life, and as beacons of strength and character to the men in their lives.
Dr Kumar completed his medical degree in India and went on to study and serve as faculty at the world’s finest institute of global health at Johns Hopkins University, USA. He turned his focus to UP, it being one of the most dangerous places for childbirth in the world – accounting for a quarter of preventable deaths of mothers and infants in India.
Dr Kumar returned from the US in 2002 to set up a community co-laboratory in rural Shivgarh (75 kms from Lucknow) to understand community practices around maternity and childbirth and seek clues towards solving this crisis.
His solution combined scientific evidence and traditional wisdom and empowered mothers to adopt simple practices to save the lives of their newborns – leading to a 54% reduction in newborn deaths and overall improvement in maternal health.
Dr Kumar came up with the idea to empower the community that was thought to be illiterate with simple connect and see the impact.
“It was not true that newborn health was not the priority of the community. We found the communities had an organised system of caring for the newborn but there were risk factors too, especially in the first week of birth,” he says, adding when he started work in 2003 the idea was to empower the community with a few things that can reduce mortality.
To make women understand changes they need to do, Dr Kumar got messages via local stories to connect with the people. To make them understand the importance of mothers’ first milk, a story of how cow feeds the calf despite was made.
His focus is on innovation. “We have innovations going around everywhere. The challenge is how to get these innovations to people or communities,” he says.
Expressing happiness on receiving the HT Woman Award, he says the award is a platform which starts a series of efforts towards the issue taken up. “It is not an event but a beginning,” he adds.
His mission is to take Kangaroo Care to every baby, to make every newborn death count, make mothers a political force, and end preventable newborn deaths. The need is to take technology ahead to harness human possibility.