Revision as of 23:11, 13 September 2020

A brief biography

Dr O P Yadava, August 31, 2020: The Times of India

Born on June 20, 1917 in the dusty town of Magwe in central British Burma, the young Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavati was one of the brightest students at the Rangoon Medical College, graduating MBBS ‘magna cum laude’. However, Japan’s invasion of Burma in 1942 and forced Padmavati, her mother and sisters to flee Magwe for Coimbatore, leaving the menfolk behind. After three agonising years of no news of the men, the family was reunited in 1945 when the war ended. It’s probably these experiences and her indomitable spirit that went on to shape her career in cardiology, a field that hardly existed in India at the time. Such was her contribution that it earned her sobriquet of the ‘Godmother of Cardiology’, and many will mourn her death on Saturday at the age of 103.

Padmavati did her post graduate studies in London and acquired Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. After a stint in Sweden under Gustav Nylin and Gunnat Bjorck at the Sodersjukhuset hospital, she headed for the mecca of cardiology -- John Hopkins in Baltimore -- and later to the Harvard Medical School, Boston, where she trained with the legendary Helen Taussig and Paul Dudley White.

On her return to India, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the then Union Health Minister, appointed her to the faculty at the Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi. Subsequently she was elevated to professor and head of the Department of Medicine. She went on to establish North India’s first Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory at the Lady Hardinge Medical

College in 1954. Besides her clinical responsibilities, she also did valuable epidemiological research. In 1967, she took over as director-principal of Maulana Azad Medical College and associated Irwin and G B Pant Hospitals. It was here that she introduced the first DM course in cardiology, the first coronary care unit and the first coronary care van in India.

Dr S Padmavati founded the All India Heart Foundation in 1962, and the National Heart Institute in 1981, developing it into a modern heart hospital in Delhi with the first cardiac catheterisation laboratory in the private sector in the southern hemisphere.

Awards and accolades came fast and furious, including the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and Padma Vibhushan in 1992. But having seen her as a rookie medical student, as a resident doctor, as a consultant cardiac surgeon and as the chief executive officer of National Heart Institute, one can testify to the fact that there was never a trace of arrogance. Instead, she was quiet, firm and ever-graceful in her silk sarees.

On a lighter note, she was quite the sports freak, lapping 20-30 lengths of the pool well into her 90s. Spartan in diet, she did enjoy her glass of port every evening with a 30-minute dose of ‘BBC News’. You will be missed, Paddy madam.

Dr Yadava is chief cardiac surgeon & chief executive officer, National Heart Institute (Friends, colleagues and admirers who wish to pay tribute to Dr S I Padmavati can do so on www.toi.in)