Dr JN Pande, eminent chest specialist, loses Covid battle

Dr Jitendra Nath Pande, former head of the division of medication on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), died on Friday night time with coronavirus illness (Covid-19). He was 78.

His colleagues and college students keep in mind him as an encyclopaedia of medication, pioneer of crucial care in northern India, in addition to a devoted physician and trainer.

As a professor, he used to achieve the wards for the morning spherical to check-in on all of the admitted sufferers earlier than his college students. “He would be there at 7.30am every day. We were supposed to reach the wards at 8am, check on the patients and report to him,” mentioned Dr Anoop Misra, certainly one of his college students, and now the chairman of Fortis C-DOC centre of excellence for diabetes, metabolic illnesses and endocrinology.

“There were times when he would look at a patient and give a diagnosis in minutes,” he mentioned.

Even after changing into a physician in his personal proper, when Dr Misra was uncertain of any therapy course or bother with analysis, he consulted Dr Pande.

Dr Pande was additionally one of many first to determine intensive care items (ICU) in northern India. “It is a great loss to the entire medical fraternity. He helped set up one of the first ICUs in the country. Many of the current leading intensive care experts have trained under him,” mentioned Dr Ashok Kumar, who studied beneath Dr Pande as an MBBS and post-graduate scholar. He is presently working as director of rheumatology division at Fortis Hospital in Vasant Kunj.

The Supreme Court referred to Dr Pande’s staff’s research on ‘Outdoor air pollution and emergency room visits at a hospital in Delhi’ in its 1997-98 judgment banning diesel buses within the Capital.

“Sometimes, when we asked him a question, he would reply with the exact page number and table we should refer to,” Dr Kumar mentioned.

Dr GC Khilnani, former head of the division of pulmonary medication at AIIMS, mentioned, “He was born to a family of teachers, he was my mentor and one of the greatest teachers I know. At that time, many chose to go abroad and practice medicine but he remained at AIIMS right from his graduation to superannuation.”

Dr Pande was nonetheless practising medication, consulting about 50 sufferers a day at Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research in New Delhi.