Dr Anil Tandon, 2010

Project:

Jamshedpur

Bio:

I am an Australian born Indian, and have travelled to India more than a dozen times to visit relatives. I have never lived nor practiced medicine in India. My Hindi is of a very basic standard only.

I have worked as Palliative Care Physician since 2001. On two occasions I have worked as a locum physician in the UK for 6 months: Wales in 2001 and Scotland in 2007.My current clinical positions are in a consultative service in a tertiary hospital and as a visiting physician to the Kimberley (which is a sparsely populated remote region in the north west of Australia with a large Aboriginal population

Living a life of comfort in a wealthy country makes it challenging to go visit family in India and see what is missing in health care (let alone other aspects of day to day life).

Adding on top of that what seems to be a lack of understanding of the importance of pain relief, difficulties in accessing analgesics etc in my home state makes me question how I can help, if at all. The incredible focus on IV fluids, high cost medicines, chemotherapy etc when death appears close (even to the untrained observer) is just the icing on the cake.

Rosalie(Shaw) has been gently encouraging me to help palliative care services in the developing world in a practical way for some time now, but mainly due to the ties of a young family in Perth, I haven’t thought seriously about going to India at a professional level until now. Now that the kids are a little bit older, maybe 2010 will be the start.