Public health heroes

Today is the Ides of March.

Besides the day when Julius Ceasar was murdered in AD 44 - its also the day when John Snow was born in 1813.

Who is John Snow you ask? Well - many call him the father of Public Health. He certainly set the field of epidemiology in motion through a brilliant set of deductions that found that most of the cholera cases in a slum suburb of London could be traced to a single contaminated pump. By shutting the hand-pump down he helped stop the cholera outbreak. And thus was born epidemiology - the art and science of understanding how diseases spread through populations - and making interventions based on data.

Interestingly, it was with the help of Rev. Henry Whitehead, a local clergyman and amateur scientist (professionals did not exist then...) that Snow was able to do much of the footwork which helped prove that the cholera was not from 'miasma' (impure airs) but rather by germs - and that too through water polluted by human faeces. Their partnership is just one of many often unsung collaborations between what has in some minds become an intractable 'conflict' between 'faith' and 'science.'

So why does all this come to mind today?

Well I got an email from Uganda - where one of my brilliant school friends Dr. Sundeep Gupta is living out an amazing life as working with the Centres for Disease Control in Entebbe.

Sundeep informed us that a legend in community health has passed away. Dr. Carl Taylor died had died at 93 - like it was said of Abraham - "old and full of years". Sundeep tells us that Dr. Taylor spent his 90th and 91st years in Afghanistan, helping set up community-based primary health care programs with local women's groups there.

Dr. Taylor was born in Landour, Mussoorie and went to Woodstock School, graduating in 1932 and going on to study medicine at Harvard. Returning in the late 1940s as a missionary doctor - he was saddened by the many preventable deaths that he was trying to treat and decided to take public health training - again at Harvard. He came back to India in the early 1950s and set into action a set of community health initiatives which changed the world. It was Dr. Taylor and others who showed the village health workers could be trained in basic maternal and child care in their own rural environments. Dr. Taylor's further career included being one of the founders of the International Health programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (still arguably the best in the world) - and many posts with the UN and WHO including being the head of UNICEF in China. Probably the biggest impact Dr. Taylor had was to be a key figure in helping get the Alma Ata Declaration where 134 countries pledged to make Primary Health Care a basic right.


Another of our classmates - Suzanne Hurley - is Dr. Taylor's niece. She remembers her Uncle Carl:"He truly was a remarkable man--such an incredible heart for people." But in a strange way I feel that it is through Sundeep whom I share my albeit distant link with Dr. Taylor. Sundeep counts the legend as a mentor and a friend. He worked together with Dr. Taylor and has authored an amazing study which evaluates the evidence for community health programmes being effective around the world.

I have been blessed with some amazing friends - and Sundeep ranks up there among the most remarkable of them. Looking over his career so far I can only say that I am deeply challenged by Sundeep. A clinical doctor and public health specialist Sundeep has over the years combined his intellectual brilliance with a deeply humane vision of service and care. He has worked with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in multiple settings around the world. At one point he was considering working in Maharashtra - but finally decided to work in Uganda for the past few years along with his amazing wife Fatima (from El Salvador) and their two lovely daughters.

Sundeep finished off his email by saying: Although, as stated in the [New York Times] obituary, his ground-breaking professional achievements have already become a permanent part of the history books, it was his caring and inspiring personal nature that will be remembered by those around him.

So there we have them - a few of my public health heroes - Dr. John Snow, Dr. Carl Taylor - and my latest one - the one whose story is still unravelling, still unfolding - my very own friend Dr. Sundeep Gupta!