Some sweet news

IT IS referred to as a silent killer and a sudden one too, a wasting disease and a metabolic aberration. Diabetes Mellitus per se may sound hardly frightening, but its capacity to affect the vital organs cannot be ignored. Yet a visit to the MV Hospital for Diabetes in Royapuram, and aconversation with Dr. A. Ramachandran, its director, is bound to leave a diabetes patient optimistic and cheerful.

The MV Hospital is basically a one-ailment centre. "Calling it a hospital is itself a misnomer", says Dr. Ramachandran, "because this is a place where we make diabetes patients live a normal life... with confidence".

Every negative factor connected with the disease is negated by the doctors at the MV diabetes centre.

The manner of staffing at MV is quite impressive. Apart from diabetologists, physicians and surgeons, there are dietitians, specialist nurses and assistants who have been specifically trained to be health educators.

Intercoms announcing free trips by vans for patients who have finished their consultations and wish to get dropped at Parrys Corner, calls for patients to meet the various doctors, rows and rows of patients awaiting their turn - the scene in short is of non-stop activity.

"We do not practise the present day hospital culture that is so much in vogue", asserts Dr. Ramachandran. What he means is that at the MV Hospital, they do not stop with investigation alone, observation is an indispensable feature and treatment is tailored to suit individual needs.

For example you need not go in with a persistent headache, then be forced to undergo innumerable tests and return with a folder filled with vague details, your wallet thinned and your headache intact. MV Diabetes Hospital has video shows, books, bulletins, classes and individual counselling for the misinformed, less informed and uninformed patients. The patients and their families get to know everything they ought to about the disease and the treatment.

In fact attending the classes in the huge, air-conditioned auditorium at the MV hospital proves an interesting experience. It is more of a catechistic session, with the person giving lessons, using slides, asking questions, eliciting answers and making the patients, who are the "students", feel absolutely at ease. These highly interactive classes seem to spread cheer, confidence and goodwill in the minds of the diabetes-afflicted and in their kith and kin. Myths about what a diabetes patient can or cannot eat, what kind of exercises ought to be taken up and other vital details are imparted with care at these daily classes. The significant aspect is that the person giving lessons in an informal, conversational tone, does it fluently, and simultaneously in both English and Tamil, bearing in mind the fact that there could be those who can follow only one of the two tongues.

"It was my wife Shobana's idea", says Dr. Ramachandran. Shobana Ramachandran is an integral part of the Diabetes Research Centre, which began functioning in 1972. She decided that classes with the help of audio visual aids, would enable patients gain a clear perspective of their ailment and its do's and dont's. Today these daily classes are greatly popular and eagerly looked forward to.

The classes are held during the time when patients have finished one test and are waiting for the next. One can walk in and out of the sessions as he pleases and also spend his waiting time usefully at the premises.

There are patients coming from places as far away as Sri Lanka and from all parts of our country.

Dr. Vijay Viswanathan, the joint director of the hospital and the senior vice president of its research centre, concentrates on the diabetic kidney and foot diseases. The foot lab at the Diabetes Research Centre does yeoman service in preventing gangrene and amputation through early detection.

When first established in 1954 by Prof. M. Viswanathan, this hospital exclusively for diabetes mellitus, was the only one of its kind in the world. "But today we train doctors to set up such clinics... and many have", says Dr. Ramachandran.

Research, which even includes the primary prevention of the disease, is a unique aspect of the Diabetes Research Centre, the constant pursuit of which results in findings which in turn help provide quality care at the MV Hospital.

As you walk out of the lecture hall, you hear the young lady telling the group there that there is no substitute for walking, for diabetes patients.

And as the class goes on you feel that probably it would also be difficult to find a substitute for this kind of a one-stop haven for diabetes patients.

MALATHI RANGARAJAN

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