Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Few
doctors can boast a better pedigree than Dr Inder Singh Anand, Professor
of Medicine at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Heart
Failure Program at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.
His late father, Dr Santokh Singh Anand, was one of the founders of
India’s prestigious Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and
Research – known as PGI – in Chandigarh, Punjab.
And following in his dad’s footsteps, young Inder won a Rhodes
scholarship in 1966 to earn a D. Phil in cardiovascular physiology from
Oxford.
“I was a Rhodes scholar contemporary of Bill Clinton at Oxford,’’ says
the 68-year-old.
After becoming a full-fledged clinical cardiologist when he returned to
Punjab to serve at the PGI in 1976, he had a bagful of experience – from
the UK MRC, the Clinical Research Centre at Harrow, the National
Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and Kings College Hospital, London, and
the National Heart and Lung Institute, also in London.
Immediately, the young doctor set about putting that experience to use
by creating one of India’s first interventional cardiology programs and
doing pioneering work on two areas: congestive heart failure and
high-altitude medicine and biology.
In the case of congestive heart failure, his research shed light on the
patho-physiology of salt and water retention, proving that the stimulus
for fluid retention is a threat to the arterial blood pressure that is
common to all congestive states independent of cardiac function.
And to investigate first-hand the effects of high altitude on the
cardiovascular system, Dr Inder Singh went places – from the Siachen
Glacier to the mountains of Tibet and Bolivia.
“Actually, I was a medical student during the 1962 Indo-China war. I had
heard cases of a strange sickness among unacclimatized Indian soldiers
sent to fight the Chinese at high altitudes in the Himalayas. They
developed what was then an unknown condition called High Altitude
Pulmonary Edema or HAPE. It caused the soldiers to cough up blood and
feel breathing difficulties,’’ he recalls.
[A similar but less acute mysterious illness affected the Indian solders
fighting the Pakistanis at extreme altitudes of 18,000 to 23,000 feet at
the Siachen glacier in the late 1980s. His work on these solders led to
the discovery of a new disease, “Adult Subacute Mountain Sickness”,
related to prolonged stay at those altitudes. This condition became less
common when the tenure of stay at extreme altitude was reduced.]
His later expeditions to the Siachen and Tibet highlands led him to
pioneer the use of inhaled nitric oxide for managing high altitude
pulmonary edema or HAPE in soldiers.
And Dr Inder Singh proved that biological adaptation was the reason why
mountain people and animals (yak) survived in high altitude where plains
people couldn’t. It was because people and animals indigenous to the
mountains lacked vascular smooth muscle in the pulmonary arterioles,
which resulted in low lung artery pressure and thus normal breathing.
After 15 years at the PGI where he could have become the next boss,
Inder suddenly changed career gears.
“I got a no-strings offer from the University of Minnesota and VA
Medical Centre to set up a new department of heart failure research.
They said you come and see the place first. So I came – coinciding with
the meeting of the American Heart Association in November 1990 – and met
them and was interviewed. I told them that I won’t write any exam and
will come only at the level of a professor. They accepted all my
conditions and organized everything – green card, etc. So I landed here
on November 9, 1991, and still going strong,’’ he says with a laugh.
Any regrets about leaving India?
“My
dad was upset. He didn’t want me to leave India. I was the boss of
cardiology and knew just about everybody who mattered. But I said: let
me give it a try. I took a two-year leave and came here. They kept
calling me, saying that I would be the next director of the PGI – I was
that senior there,’’ he says.
After a pause, Inder adds, “Not only was I that senior and respected,
but also I asked to help computerize PGI’s patients records. We bought
the first computer from Infosys. Nobody knew Infosys at that time and
the Infosys guy used to bring computers on the back of his bicycle.’’
But it was the stifling culture that forced him to leave, he says.
“Unlike the IITs, the politicians didn’t make the PGI independent of
their control. Its governing body was under their thumb. These things
made me wonder whether I will be able to do things I wanted to do.
That’s why I left India,’’ he says.
Looking back on his 21 years in the US, he says, “I had no difficulty in
adjusting here because I had done my clinical training in the UK. Then I
didn’t do any three-year residence or two-year fellowship, etc. I
straightaway got the same role here that I had in India.
“I was the first Sikh in Medicine at the University of Minnesota and not
even for a day did I suffer any discrimination. On the contrary, I was
the beneficiary of positive discrimination as everybody went out of
their way to help me. When we bought our home, we were welcomed with
banners and there was a night party for us.’’
But more than anything else, he says, he cherishes the compliments he
has got from his patients and colleagues over the years.
“Now, I am going on leave, but the patients say they will wait for me to
return and get only checked by me. When I tell them that they may have
to wait for a long time, they say: they will wait till I return. There
can no better compliment than this for a doctor,’’ says Inder.
He is equally effusive in his praise for his colleagues. “There have
been occasions when I could go to a meeting. They would postpone it
rather than go ahead with it. That is the best compliment from my
colleagues,’’ he says warmly.
Dr Inder Singh is amazed by the achievements of second and third
generations Sikh-Americans and Indians who have got into the medical
profession.
“Most of the first generation Sikh-American and Indian doctors went into
practice because they were not getting higher positions in teaching. But
about 10 years before I came here, we started getting top teaching
positions.
“Now the scenario has changed so dramatically that we are holding top
teaching positions in the medical profession. There are many big names
and they have won top awards. Almost of all of them are second and third
generation Sikh-Americans and Indians. They have been accepted because
they went to the best schools and colleges in the US,’’ says Inder.
He gives much of the credit for the rise of Sikhs and Indians in the
medical profession to parents who, unlike their American counterparts,
pay for their children’s education.
“While an average American medical student will end up with a debt of
$200,000 when he or she completes his medical credentials, a
Sikh-American student will have no such debt burden because Sikh parents
pay for their children’s education. That is one of the reason Sikh
students have better scores than American students. Sikh parents
consider it their moral duty to see their children through college and
university. This is a cultural thing,’’ he says.
Considering these cultural and financial advantages for Sikh students,
Dr Inder Singh Anand says,“The future of our people is very bright in
this country. Look at how they are rising in all professions. Many out
of the 35 Rhodes scholars from the US each year are Sikh-Americans and
Indians.’’
Very true.
