Health delegation from India explores ties with UCLA

By Ajay Singh

India's minister of health and family welfare, Anbumani Ramadoss, led a delegation to the David Geffen School of Medicine June 25 to explore and expand on a range of educational and medical collaborations with UCLA in health-related fields.

In an event jointly sponsored by the Center for International Research in Disease, the UCLA AIDS Institute and the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Indian delegation was presented with the broad scope of the medical school’s diverse research activities, driven by as many as 2,198 faculty and some 3,500 volunteer clinical faculty.

The event, held at the Friedman Conference Room in the Marion Davies Children’s Center, began with a talk by Leonard H. Rome, senior associate dean for research. He apprised the delegation of the school’s various initiatives in fundamental biomedical sciences, including nanotechnology, immunology and genetics. UCLA has one of the strongest training programs in health sciences research.

Over the past 35 years, hundreds of physicians trainees at the medical school have learned how to provide increased access and quality care to patients, said Martin F. Shapiro, professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research.

Over the years, UCLA has trained and sent back to India more than 70 Indian postdoctoral students specializing in the prevention, treatment and care of HIV/AIDS patients. India could learn much from the careful, unbiased study of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and related services and therapies in the United States, Shapiro said in response to the Indian health minister’s observation that because of illiteracy and ignorance, HIV/AIDS remains a taboo subject in India.

UCLA has helped develop medical research and health care with some of India’s leading medical schools and institutions over the past 15 years. These include the high-profile All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the nation’s largest hospital and medical research facility based in New Delhi, and the Indian Council of Medical Research, whose emeritus director, Nirmal Ganguly, was part of the Indian delegation.

UCLA can offer India valuable assistance in curbing tobacco consumption — one of the minister’s top priorities, Ganguly said, alluding to the fact that nearly half of the world’s smokers are in China, India and Indonesia. The School of Public Health has done much work on tobacco control, including school-level prevention measures, the creation of smoke-free spaces and efforts to reduce smoking through advocacy and the media, said Roshan Bastani, a professor of health services and the school’s associate dean of research.

Given its well-known multidisciplinary focus, the public health school has enormous potential to support some of India’s largest and most important national health programs, said the Indian-born Bastani, whose parents still live in India. These include the National Rural Health Mission, the National Cancer Control Program and the Integrated Disease Surveillance System.