Login Register
Follow Us

Honourably yours

The Padma awards were instituted in 1954 in recognition of distinguished services in various fields. Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award after the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibushan and Padma Bhushan.

Show comments

Bhanu P Lohumi

The Padma awards were instituted in 1954 in recognition of distinguished services in various fields. Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award after the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibushan and Padma Bhushan. So far, 3,005 people have received the Padma Shri and of these, over a dozen are from Himachal, including Kapil Mohan, Barjinder Singh, Rajender Singh, Vijay Sharma, Musafir Ram Bhardwaj, Bhalchandra Nemade and Yeshi Dhanden.

In 2019, two more names were added to the list in the field of medicine and sports. Dr Omesh Kumar Bharti and DSP Ajay Thakur, Captain of Indian kabaddi team, were given the coveted honour by the President of India recently. According to them, their greatest satisfaction is that the awards have brought rabies and kabaddi in focus and now, more people would be inclined towards these twin areas of health and sports.

People ridiculed his ‘crazy’ ideas

Success is no accident, it is hard work, perseverance, sacrifice and feeling for suffering of people that turns your passion into a mission. This applies aptly to Dr Omesh Kumar Bharti who was awarded the Padma Shri for developing a globally accepted new protocol, which has made rabies prophylaxis affordable by reducing the dose of life-saving rabies immunoglobulin (RIG), for rabid dog-bite patients.

The World Health Organization (WHO) notified the modified rabies immunisation protocol developed by Dr Bharti, a field epidemiologist with the Health Department of Himachal Pradesh in its new guidelines issued in April, 2018. More than 40,000 dog and monkey-bite patients have been treated with this protocol in Himachal in the past five years, which has cut down the cost drastically from Rs 35,000 to Rs 350 per patient.

The previous guidelines of WHO prescribed injecting patients with anti-rabies vaccine and anti-rabies serum (RIG-extracted from horse or human blood). The RIG was required to be administered in large doses as per the body weight of patients and involved exorbitant cost. The dose of RIG thus calculated used to be given as much as in the wound and remaining intramuscularly.

With his research in collaboration with WHO Collaborative Centre on Rabies Research at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, Dr Bharti established that local infiltration of RIG in wound is the essential life-saving step and the remaining RIG that is injected intra-muscularly is of no value.

“It used to upset me that most victims died due to lack of treatment, mainly due to non-affordability of medicine. After doing MBBS in 1992, my yearning to work on cheap treatment for rabies prevention became my passion, which I pursued as a mission,” says Dr Bharti.

While many doctors initially ridiculed his ‘crazy’ ideas, he remained undeterred. Whenever there was any report of death due to suspected rabies in HP, Dr Bharti followed it and tried to reach the spot to know the cause and in most cases unaffordable treatment was cited as the reason. In one case, a private taxi driver died due to dog bite in Sunni in Shimla district and it was revealed that the salary of the victim was Rs 3,000 per month, while the treatment cost was over Rs 30,000.

“In 2014, a few dog-bite patients died despite having anti-rabies vaccine, but not RIG due to unavailability in market. As I had already read thousands of research papers, I did the intervention at Deen Dyal Upadhyaya hospital in Shimla with a go-ahead from the then Medical Superintendent of hospital Dr PL Gaunta and then Director, Health, Dr DS Gurung. The intervention was to provide the essential RIG in wound to patients by getting some vials from Central Research Institute, Kasauli. This saved the patients,” he explains.  Noted rabies experts late Dr SN Madhusudana from NIMHANS and Dr Henry Wilde from Thailand gave him technical support and helped him document the intervention.

He said dog bites should be treated as soon as possible with intra-dermal vaccination and infiltration of antibodies (RIG) in wound to neutralise the virus there. After dog bite, the virus in saliva remains on the surface of wound and generally takes a week to replicate and attach to the nerve endings. Once the virus goes into the nerve, there is no cure.

Rabies has no cure, prevention only solution

  • Rabies has no cure and prevention is the only solution to save the lives of rabid dog and monkey-bite victims
  • Replication of new protocol named by Dr Bharti as Himachal Model (injecting vaccine in skin and serum in wound) would help save 20,000 people in the country and 60,000 persons worldwide every year.

His dream is to win 2019 World Cup

My dream is to win the world cup slated for 2019 and get nominated for Arjun Award, says DSP Ajay Thakur, Captain of the Indian Kabadi team, who was awarded with the prestigious Padma Shri recently. Ajay shot to fame by his stunning performance in 2016 Kabaddi World Cup final, with India winning the title. During the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup, he was the number 1 raider of the tournament with maximum raid points. Ajay also won the title of highest overall point scorer with 68 points and his best performance came in the final with Iran, where he scored 12 raid points.

“Schools should be the breeding ground for sports, especially Kabadi. To excel in sports, the policy of ‘catch them young’ has to be followed and the foundation has to be laid during early school years,” says Thakur, adding that inclination towards sports in schools and colleges would also help in keeping youngsters away from drugs. 

However, families especially parents can play an important role in shaping the future of their child by keeping a watch on their activities and staying in touch with teachers in schools and colleges, he opined.

Normally, the performance of players gets affected after they are inducted in services and jobs, but in Himachal we have ample time to practice and there is no stress, which is a pre-requisite for good performance, says Ajay, who is currently undergoing field training at Bilaspur.

Advocating for creation of sports wing in the police like in Haryana, where all sportsperson could be brought under one platform, he said sportsmen posted in areas that lack facility of playgrounds and adequate sports infrastructure, cannot excel and lose competitive edge. Moreover deploying all sportsperson at one place would not only hone their skills and improve quality of their game, but also ensure better coordination, which is essential for increasing the medal tally.

“There is no dearth of talent in Himachali youth, who work really hard and once you win medals, job opportunities are waiting for you as 3 per cent jobs are reserved for outstanding sportspersons in the police and other government departments, Boards and Corporations,” he said.

Recalling his childhood days, Thakur said his father used to motivate him to play Kabaddi, saying “you have to win medal for the country”. “His encouraging words are the guiding force behind my success till date and I owe my success to him,” he said.

“I hailed from a poor family and had to struggle to carve a niche. I used to run barefoot as I could not afford sports shoes. I vividly remember that I had only Rs 60 in my pocket, when I first went on a 10-day tour to Andhra Pradesh to play the nationals and I could chase my goal, as I was hungry to do something in life,” says Ajay.

“I was in fourth standard, when I participated in the 32-kg category in sub-junior level for the first time,” says Thakur, who never looked back since then. He was also a key player in the Indian kabaddi team that won the gold medal at the Incheon Asian Games in 2014 and represented the country in 2013 Indo-Asian games held in Korea and 2007 Indo-Asian Games in China. “For a Kabadi player, fitness is of paramount importance, supplemented with continuous practice which improves reflexes and mental strength. I am very about my diet and take lots of liquids. Dinner is a luxury for me, as I do not take any meal after 5 pm,” he says.

Awards and achievements 

  • Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games Kabaddi: Gold Medal (2013)
  • Asian Indoor Games: Gold Medal (2007)
  • Asian Games: Gold Medal (2014)
  • Asian Kabaddi Championship (Gorgan, Iran): Gold Medal (2017)
  • World Cup (Ahmedabad, India): Gold medal (2016)
  • Asian Games (Jakarta, Indonesia): Bronze Medal (2018)
  • Padma Shri: 2019
Show comments
Show comments

Top News

Most Read In 24 Hours