A TRIBUTE TO WOMEN IN HEALTHCARE

Women have always been synonymous with healthcare. From our childhood days when we fell sick, it was due to the intervention of women such as our mother, sister or aunt that one was restored back to health. They were the ones who administered medicine and provided suitable nutrition and essential nursing. Although universal and huge, for health and well being of humankind, it used to be a role played away from fanfare and limelight. The past two centuries though, have seen women emerging from the restrictions of homes to make path-breaking contributions to every aspect of healthcare. “The Lady with the Lamp” – Florence Nightingale laid the foundations of modern nursing by mid-9th century. She wrote her classic book on nursing – the principles she outlined are unchanged till date. She founded the first formal school for nurses and was a principal advisor in the creation of the Royal Army Medical Hospital. She invented the “Rose Diagram” – statistical evaluation of mortality – fundamental to the developments in AI, Blockchain and Cloud for healthcare data-bases, now under development. And thus she became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858. Thereafter, in every field of medicine, contributions by the distaff gender followed thick and fast. Despite persecution Margaret Sanger gave the world safe and effective birth control, along with its first birth control clinic and first oral contraceptive. Modern diagnostics was only possible because of two time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie’s studies of radiation (particularly X-rays). Along with her daughter, the duo built the world’s first mobile X-ray machine and radiology unit. She was also the founder of the Curie Institute in Paris, which remains at the forefront of cancer research today. Other outstanding contributions by women have included: identification of HIV as the cause of AIDS (Francoise Barré-sinoussi); determining the structure of DNA (Rosalind Franklin); understanding neurological disease – dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and ADHD (Patricia Goldman-rakic); and developing the Apgar test for infants (Virginia Apgar). The impact made by all these women on modern day healthcare is massive. They pave the way for others to follow – regardless of gender.