Overcoming adversity to achieve medical excellence and serve society
New Delhi :
The life story of Dr. S.A. Ali is a testament to resilience and determination, illustrating how an individual can surmount varied challenges to achieve success. Born in a poor family in Andhra Pradesh’s Kadapa, Dr. Ali’s transformation from poverty to becoming a revered doctor and professor is truly inspiring.
Dr. Ali is now a prominent figure in the Uttar Pradesh city of Mathura where he runs a clinic. He previously served at the TB Sanatorium in the historic city of Vrindavan.
With an impressive array of qualifications including MBBS, MD, DNB, and MNAMS, as well as diplomas in ultrasound and cardiology, Dr. Ali, an expert in chest-related diseases, has treated over 150,000 patients with a remarkable 99% recovery rate.
Dr. Ali has not forgotten his childhood and the challenges associated with poverty. His encounter with hardships early on has instilled in his character a sense of compassion and magnanimity. And it shows: He does not charge anything from the poor and the needy and at times even provides the necessary medicines to them at no cost.
Reflecting on his childhood, Dr. Ali recounts the struggles his family faced due to his father’s modest income as a tailor. “Getting higher education was a dream,” he says. “I borrowed books and notes from friends, and often walked or borrowed a friend’s bicycle to get around.”
Despite these challenges, Dr. Ali studied tirelessly for over 18 hours a day. Initially aspiring to fulfill his father’s dream of becoming a lawyer, he eventually decided to pursue a career in medicine. “The challenges I faced in my childhood made me feel I should also help people. And now I work with this passion,” he explains.
Dr. Ali’s dedication and hard work earned him a prestigious status from the Indian Medical Association as a professor, a title awarded to only ten doctors for a five-year term, from 2021 to 2026. “The professors and teachers who taught me during my college days were very good. They helped me in every possible way,” he says with gratitude.
His commitment to serving others took him to Vrindavan. “Coming to Vrindavan was all about service,” he states. “Caste or religion had no place in coming here.”
Dr. Ali’s message to the youth is one of perseverance and community involvement. He advises them to “join the society and try to take it to a better state.” He encourages young people to walk or cycle whenever possible, both for health benefits and environmental conservation. “This will strengthen their health and the environment will also be protected by reducing fuel consumption,” he says.
Highlighting the importance of environmental conservation, he urges efforts to enhance water levels in rivers, streams, wells, and ponds. “Meaningful discussions on the environment should continue through political debates, political rallies, and social media,” he asserts.
Dr. Ali also calls on his fellow doctors to engage with the poorer sections of society and government schools to raise awareness about diseases. “They should connect with women groups because after becoming aware, women can give a healthy life to their entire family,” he adds.
In his journey from poverty to becoming a respected doctor, Dr. Ali exemplifies how adversity can be transformed into achievement through hard work, education, and a commitment to helping others.
source: http://www.clarionindia.net / Clarion India / Home> Clarion Special> Editors Pick / by Mohammad Alamullah, Clarion India / June 10th, 2024
Muslim representation has come down in Andhra Pradesh Assembly. Only three Muslims have been elected in the just concluded elections while four Muslims were elected in 2019.
All the three were elected on the tickets of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which, along with its allies Jana Sena and BJP, has scored a landslide victory.
The TDP had fielded three Muslims and all of them have emerged winners.
YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) had fielded seven Muslim candidates, the highest ever in the state’s history and all of them were defeated.
TDP-Jana Sena-BJP alliance has won a whopping 164 seats in the 175-member Assembly. It also won 21 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats.
Senior TDP leader and former minister Nasyam Mohammed Farook was elected from Nandyal constituency. He defeated Silpa Ravi Chandra Kishore Reddy of YSRCP by a margin of 12,333.
This is the fourth time Farook has been elected as MLA. He was earlier elected in 1985, 1994 and 1999. The senior leader had served as deputy speaker of the Assembly and a minister in united Andhra Pradesh.
Mohammed Naseer Ahmed of TDP has been elected from Guntur East. He defeated Noori Fatima Shaik of YSRCP by a margin of 31,962 votes. The YSRCP had denied a ticket to sitting MLA Mohammad Mustafa and fielded Noori Fathima.
The Congress party had also fielded a Muslim candidate Shaik Mastan Vali, who was elected on Congress ticket in 2009. He, however, finished a distant third.
This constituency had been electing Muslim MLA candidates since the 1980s.
The third Muslim to be elected to the Assembly is M. Shahjahan Basha. He defeated S. Nisar Ahamad of YSRCP by 5,509 votes in Madanapalle constituency. He was earlier elected from here as Congress candidate in 2009.
The YSRCP had not fielded Mohammed Nawaz Basha, who was elected from here in 2019.
In Kadiri constituency, YSRCP’s B.S. Maqbool lost to K. Venkata Prasad of TDP by a margin of 6,265 votes.
This was the second time that YSRCP has given Kadiri ticket to a Muslim. In 2014, Attar Chand Basha was elected from here.
Deputy Chief Minister and YSRCP leader Amzath Basha Shaik Bepari suffered defeat in Kadapa. She lost to Madhavi Reddappa of TDP by 18,860 votes. The fielding of a Muslim candidate by Congress party led to Basha’s defeat. T.K. Afzal Ali Khan of Congress secured 24,500 votes, spoiling the chances of the YSRCP candidate, who was seeking re-election for a third consecutive term.
Kadapa constituency in Jagan Mohan Reddy’s home district of YSR Kadapa has been electing Muslim candidates since 1994. TDP’s S.A. Khaleel Basha was elected in 1994 and 1999 while Congress party’s Ahmadullah Mohammad was elected in 2004 and 2009.
In Kurnool, retired IAS officer MD. Imtiaz lost to TDP’s T.G. Bharath by a margin of 18,876 votes. Congress party’s Shaik Jeelani Basha finished third and secured 9,022 votes.
The YSRCP has denied renomination to sitting MLA Hafeez Khan to field Imtiaz, who took voluntary retirement to join the ruling party in February.
A state-cadre IAS officer of 2009 batch, Imtiaz hails from Kurnool, which has a sizable Muslim population. He had topped Group-I examination and opted for the commercial taxes department.
Khaleel Ahamd of YSRCP lost to TDP candidate P. Narayana in Nellore city constituency by a margin of over 72,000 votes. Khaleel was the first Muslim candidate from the constituency since its formation in 1952.
YSRCP’s Shaik Asif also suffered defeat in Vijayawada West. He lost to former union minister and BJP candidate Sujana Chowdary by a margin of 47,032 votes.
YSRCP claimed to be the only party which gave political reservation to Muslim community. While defending four per cent reservation for Muslims in jobs and education, Jagan Mohan Reddy had said that they gave four per cent of 175 Assembly seats to Muslims.
In 2019 when YSRCP stormed to power with a landslide majority, four Muslims were elected to the state Assembly on its tickets. It had fielded five Muslim candidates.
source: http://www.radiancenews.com / Radiance News / Home> Latest News / by Radiance News Bureau / June 08th, 2024
Dr. Azra Nalatwad’s forefathers were from a tiny town named Karnul in Andhra pradesh and had migrated to Karnataka. Behind her success of becoming a doctor is an incredible story of hard work and grit that lifted a poor family of weavers to a family of doctors. Dr Azra Nalatwad shared her and her parents’ inspirational story with Awaz-the Voice.
“My parents were extremely hardworking, poor, and struggled to make ends meet, particularly my father, Abdul Khader Karnu used to manually weave traditional saris through wooden looms, as machines had not yet arrived at that time. During his early 20s, after a lot of labour, he would make one saree.”
His family was living hand-to-mouth existence. Though Abdul Khader struggled with poverty, he dreamed big – he was determined to become a doctor. Without any prodding or help, he studied by himself while weaving sarees. Back then, there was no societal help, counselors, or family push to improve his lot. With sheer grit, he started to excel in his studies. He was so brilliant that he was sponsored for his studies in a boarding school. During holidays, he would return home and help with the business of his father and brothers.
“With great tenacity, he finally finished his studies to complete his MBBS and achieved his goal of becoming a doctor, specializing as an ENT physician. He was the first in the family to be so. Our father paved the way to help us all come up as a family.”
Her mother was a schoolteacher when she married Abdul Khader, who persuaded her to complete her MBBS and she became a gynecologist.
Dr. Azra who teaches anatomy at Karnataka Medical College says, “On seeing my parent’s hard work and toil, I resolved to study hard as well. Early in my school days, I wanted to become a doctor. So, I focused on getting admission to MBBS, which I managed to get in the area without going to a hostel to my relief.” Dr. Azra says that her life was made smooth due to the hard work of her parents.
Describing the life around her, she explains, “Around my neighbourhood, most of the girls would do some BST course, and then get married, but my parents spurred me on to do something significant and not hurry to get married. My parents always had a vision that we as a family should not just study and stay at home to be engrossed and wrapped up only in our lives but use our enlightenment to serve the community.”
Dr Azra Nalatwad during her PG course
Azra’s family is a family of doctors. “My eldest sister is a dentist, her husband is a Pathologist (MD) and younger brother Dr. Adil is a neurosurgeon, his wife is a doctor with MBA and MBBS degrees.”
Interestingly, Azra’s husband is the only non-doctor in the family and it was deliberate. She explains: “When it was time for me to get married, my father told me that since there are many doctors in their family, it was better to find my prospective husband in another field. As a family, our conversations revolved around patients and their cases, so my father felt it would be better to get a non-medical groom.”
She married an engineer who working with one of India’s leading software companies.
To follow their father’s advice to his children that they must pay it back to society, Dr. Azra says, The siblings often organize free health checkup camps at Gulbarga.” (Gulbarga is now known as Kalaburagi and has developed to become a city).
She continued, “After writing my entrance test for the post-graduation, my father encouraged me to take the course wherever I get it. He taught me never to throw away opportunities. I was selected for anatomy and it took me to teaching. I did a course to learn ultrasound technology, and in the hospital where my mother was working, I was appointed as a sinologist.”
Dr. Azra Nalatwad’s father died during the COVID surge. “He continued to see patients even during the pandemic; never isolated them and eventually caught the virus and succumbed to it while during his duty in Gulbarga.”
Azra worked at different places like Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, Ernakulam in Kerala and now she is in Bengaluru. Mother of two growing-up boys, she travels in her car from Bengaluru to Kolar daily for her anatomy teaching classes.
She explains, “I took up the teaching line in anatomy and was interested in ultrasound, so I went towards the clinical side for one and a half years, I also worked in Manipal Hospital as a senior resident doctor. Night duties in the hospital became problematic with my son as my mother-in-law was not there with me, so I quit that job and came back to teaching.”
She however loves her teaching job, “The new generation of doctors do not talk to their patients because of the long queues of people waiting to see them and they want to see as many patients as possible in a day, so impatiently, they quickly write something out for the patients and push them out to directly go for CT scans, ultrasounds without noting the signs and symptoms in the patient. There is no personal touch or caring. Once again, after their illness is diagnosed, they do not convey to the patient properly what was the problem and what steps to take, nor do they serve the patients their options. The doctors need to show them different modalities of treatment which and required them to communication properly.
“Therefore, I encourage my students to develop doctor-patient communication skills with more empathy and compassion, some emotional attachment is necessary. A patient needs to feel trust in a doctor to return to them. In the early days, a patient would only go back to their favourite doctor holding him in great esteem. These days it is sad to see patients changing the doctor midway during the treatment while complaining that the previous one was noncommittal and indifferent or even rude. These days, most of the doctors are cold and detached.
Dr Azra Nalatwad at the hospital (wearing a black Abayya)
She says her students are becoming aware of the bad doctor-patient cases as newspapers report about incidents of people assaulting doctors. “We guide them so that they will not learn through bitter experience but rather as we say, prevention is better than cure, so we teach them that when they are checking female patients, they need to take their consent and explain why they need to touch her body.”
I tell students, “You suddenly cannot ask her to lift her clothes without her consent, even if one is checking the wrist, the patient needs to be informed what the doctor is doing.” Thus, we teach our students to inform the patient before doing even a tiny procedure or even checking the pulse or temperature as a form of respect between the doctor and the patient and leave the lines open for good communication. Just directly touching the patient does not work nowadays. Teaching is a great responsibility where one does not just teach and go but has to inculcate empathy, sensitivity, communication skills, and other qualities in our students.”
Brightening up, she said, “One thing I am looking forward to is I am going to open my clinic very soon working as a family physician, serving my residents, and treating small illnesses, which do not require complicated procedures.”
She continued, “Why I want to start my clinic in Bengaluru is to ease the burden of the poor in a modest area. Nowadays, for simple sicknesses, people are going to big hospitals and get embroiled in unnecessary expenses and procedures. The OPD fees will be more than Rs. 500 or Rs. 750, an outrageous amount not required for small illnesses which is ripping the pockets of the poor. Things like a common upper respiratory tract infection, ear pain, or other little illnesses do not need an OPD visit but rather a small affordable clinic with a small fee such as Rs. 50 or Rs. 100 to make it very light and easy for them.”
She explained, “In big health centers, there is a lot of corruption going on where they hoodwink patients into paying large amounts of money for unnecessary tests, procedures, and treatment. I feel if I can help the poor in a smaller way such as this evading all the bribing that happens in big clinics and enabling health care at their doorsteps, figuratively. I want to ensure that they get immediate help and cure for their illness without running to mega hospitals to give large amounts of money which they cannot afford, to get treated.”
To pay tribute to the man who worked hard and changed his destiny, Dr Azra says she would name her hospital after her father. That she says would take a little time. Right now, besides taking care of her parents-in-law and husband, she has to look after her 12-year-old son and four-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Rita Farhat Mukand is an independent writer
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Stories / by Rita Farhat Mukund / May 14th, 2024
Purdadtoor Town (Kadapa District), ANDHRA PRADESH:
Dr Khadar Vali, the Millet man of India
Coarse grains or millets are ancient foods which contain key nutrients like vitamins, zinc, beta-carotene, and magnesium. These foods keep blood sugar under control and reduce obesity. If one eats healthy food one can simply avoid disease and medicines.
This is the message from India’s leading agronomist Dr. Khadar Vali, who is also called the Millet man of India.
Dr. Vali is an independent scientist and food expert. He has brought back five species of millet that had disappeared from the world. Today, at 66 years of age, Vali is one of the leading proponents of millet cultivation in the world. He has made world realize the importance of grains.
Millets are available not only in India but everywhere in the world. These are known by different names in each country. To date, people around the world have eaten 200 different types of whole grains.
It’s important to note that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets at the insistence of India.
Khadar Vali says that the cultivation of millets can solve problems of soil erosion and irrigation also. The food we eat creates an imbalance in blood glucose levels. It makes people sick. But all this can be avoided if we use coarse grains. If you eat millet, you never need medicine.
He says it’s a misconception that coarse grains are food for animals and birds. He says these are super foods that can prevent disease as these contain fiber that cleanses the body. These grains protect the human race and other species. Millets are food for the whole planet.
Fox millet or Bajra
Dr Khadar Vali hails from Purdadtoor town in the Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. He has been working for 20 years to revive Sridhanialu, an Indian concept about food habits that are in sync with the nature and the human body.
Earlier, he worked in a good position in the USA. Dr Vali is a post-graduate from the Regional Institute of Education, Mysore, and did his PhD on Steroids from the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru.
Vali did his postdoctoral research on a fellowship in Environmental Science from the United States. His research focused on the inactivation of deadly chemicals such as Agent Orange and dioxins. His research came at a time when food was becoming increasingly commercialized.
Around 1986-87, Dr. Khadar Vali raised the issue of food-related consequences in society when he came across a case of a girl who started menstruating at the age of 6. He decided to return to his country.
He returned to India in 1997 and worked hard to revive five different varieties of millets in Mysore that were rapidly disappearing. More than two decades later, India’s ‘Milletman’ Dr. Khadar Vali was awarded the Padma Shri on the occasion of the 74th Republic Day celebrations.
Dr. Khadar Vali says that millet has long been part of the mainstream diet but over the past 75 years, corporations marketing rice and wheat have Institutions subjected them to “systematic destruction”.
He has told the world about the benefits of coarse grains along with the negative effects of other grains from his long research on millet. Some points of his research are as follows. His research on food grains has led him to categorized them as negative, neutral, and positive.
Negative: These Grains cause diseases and include paddy rice and wheat. The fiber content of these grains is below 2 percent.
Neutral: Grains don’t cause new diseases, however, can’t help to cure health disorders and diseases. These are jawar, bajra, finger millet, proso millet, etc which carry fiber content from 3 to 6 percent.
Positive: Grains, which help to cure health diseases and disorders. These are Foxtail millets, Barnyard millets, Browntop millets, Little millets, and Kodo millets; which have fiber content from 8 to 12 percent. He named these millets Siri Dhanyaalu. Siri means wealth, which is indirectly health. .
Based on Dr. Khadar Vali’s research and findings, below are the diseases and disorders cured by the positive millets (Siri Dhanyaalu)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given the name Shree Anna to coarse grains.
The year 2023 was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Coarse Grains, after which the Grammy Award-winning Indian-American singer Fallo prepared a song, saluting the efforts of Prime Minister Modi.
In one of his tweets, Fallow mentioned the Prime Minister’s support in producing the song. This song has been prepared with the aim of promoting coarse grains and helping farmers to cultivate them and encouraging efforts to eradicate hunger from the world.
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Story / by Mansooruddin Faridi / October 07th, 2023
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