Looking back at his days as a young student of medicine, V. Mohan, chairman of the Dr. Mohan’s diabetes specialities centre, addressed students at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras on his tryst with research.
“I realised my passion for research even before I became a student of medicine. I want students today to realise that an early start in research will go a long way as it will give them some focus in a specific area,” said Dr. Mohan, during his talk titled ‘40 years of diabetes research: The story of my journey’.
The Padma Shri awardee told the students that even if their research was not earth-shattering, they should be motivated to publish it as long as it is original and new. “There is hardly any concrete research done these days and I keep telling teachers to motivate their students to start research early and during their time in college. It doesn’t matter where you begin from — we started our research on diabetes in an empty cowshed in the early 1970s; just the opportunity is enough,” said Dr. Mohan.
Talking about the studies he was involved in, Dr. Mohan referred to the largest epidemiology study done on diabetes with a sample size of over 1.24 lakh people from 29 States across the country.
“The incidence of diabetes is increasing in the country and we have more diabetes here than in any other developed country. While people initially thought that it was the rich and successful who got it, it has also hit the middle class and the lower class over the last few decades,” he said.
While there is a rising incidence of diabetes in rural areas, Dr. Mohan said that there was an urgent need to make diabetes care available, accessible, affordable, appropriate, acceptable and accountable. As part of the initiatives by the Dr Mohan’s diabetes specialities centre, he spoke about how tele-medicine has been playing a vital role in reaching out to the people there and the need to provide them with urban amenities as well.
“In both rural and urban areas, the number of people with pre-diabetes exceeds that of those with diabetes and this provides a golden window of opportunity to prevent it,” Dr. Mohan said.
