Events

Confirmed Speakers: 1. Dr. S. Suresh A pioneer in the field of diagnostic ultrasound and a stalwart, who established foetal medicine as a speciality in India with extensive knowledge and skills in all aspects of this speciality is Dr. S. Suresh, MD, MediScan Systems and also a proud alumnus of Chengalpattu Medical College. Stemming from a strong sense of social responsibility, he provides a huge volume of free service to those who cannot afford care. He has always been in the forefront of private public partnership interacting with the government of Tamil Nadu in organising and implementing screening programs both antenatal and neonatal screening besides training programs for doctors. Also, he established Foetal Care Research Foundation, an NGO, to provide preventive, supportive and curative care for birth defects. Following this, he set up the Birth Defect registry of India with the single minded focus of reducing perinatal mortality and morbidity. He has created a state of the art imaging software and is involved in a web portal to ensure standards in ultrasound reporting and education. Apart from these, he enjoys being an active Rotarian, an avid photographer and an amateur radio operator. 2. Ms. Nikarika Prem “Yoga is not a religion; it is a way of life.” Hailing from a background that embraces sports in all its vigour, is Nikarika, a child prodigy who has taken the art of yoga to an entirely new level. She took the Indian spirit to the world stage at the World Super Cup Yoga Championship held at Uruguay in 2011 and grabbed her first taste of international fame with a gold medal in Artistic Pair yoga besides being victorious in athletic, artistic, rhythmic yoga and yoga dance. Gold and silver medals refused to let go off her and adorned her yet again at the two Asian yoga championships at Thailand (2011) and Hyderabad (2012). With a heart ignited to conflagrate the rich cultural heritage of India, our TEDx speaker is inclined towards being a versatile phenomenon with gymnastics, ballet and swimming adding feathers to her already plumed hat. 3. Mr. Murthy Megavan Murthy’s story is rare and inspirational. After losing his fishing boat to the tsunami of 2004, and thereby, his ways and means of supporting himself and his family, Murthy turned to surfing after being introduced to it by Israel national Yotam Agam. Since then, Murthy has been responsible for teaching kids in Covelong village how to surf and generally introducing a surf culture to the area. He has also used surfing as tool to keep young kids away from the clutches of alcohol and drug abuse. Apart from surfing, Murthy has also been involved in efforts promoting sanitary conditions on beaches that are otherwise highly polluted. For the man who took to surfing the waves on a piece of driftwood a decade ago, the starting of his own modest little surfing school is something that makes him grin and stammer proudly, “I even have a page on Facebook, where you can send in a request for a class.” Called the Social Surf School, his dream to formally start a school at his village and make a profession out of it has taken flight thanks to help from surfers around the world. Murthy: a surfer of great dexterity, an inspiration for his community & a cultural icon. 4. Dr. B. Hari Shankar Dr B. Hari Shankar, a 2011 pass out of Chengalpattu Medical College is a unique medical practitioner creating waves in neighbouring suburbs of Nanganallur, known to be the Pensioner’s Paradise and also Dr. Hari Shankar’s home town. Just like any other MBBS graduate, Dr. Hari Shankar started out with his PG preparations after his house-surgeoncy. But during his preparation, the acute shortage of emergency geriatric services in his home town made him take up geriatric practice and homevisits to reach out to the immobile and elderly population in his community. Dr. Hari Shankar says, “My only aim was to identify the elderly patients as sick and normal. I would refer the unhealthy ones to hospitals, while I treat the others at home itself, thereby saving the old man’s pocket money.” He has visited more than 325 bedridden patients so far, and has paid 1400 documented house visits, the highest by any doctor in the state. He adds, gleefully, “All that I have done is re-introduced the concept of Home- hospitalisation, which was in vogue a few decades ago.” Dr. Hari Shankar is currently an honorary panel member of Senior Citizens Bureau of Chennai. 5. Dr. Rakhal Gaitonde Dr. Rakhal Gaitonde completed his MBBS from Government Kilpauk Medical College and MD Community Medicine from Christian Medical College, Vellore. He has since worked in Maharashtra as part of a project to evolve a people controlled health system and is presently working with Society for Community Health Awareness Research and Action (SOCHARA) broadly in the field of Community Participation, Accountability and Governance. He was also part of the process of reviewing Medical Textbooks from a gender perspective as part of the Gender and Medical Education program of the Achutha Menon Center, Trivandrum. He also works on issues of Environment and Occupational Health supporting a number of pollution impacted communities through research and advocacy. At present he is part of the the project on Community Action for Health looking at actualization of Communitization under the NRHM spread over 14 blocks and 6 districts of Tamilnadu. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee of RUWSEC hospital, which is run by a dalit womens organization. He is an active member of JSA and mfc. He is on the Tamilnadu State NGO committee and on the Community Advisory Board of the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, and on the National ASHA mentoring Group. 6. Mr. Badri Seshadri Badri graduated with a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, USA. Badri co-founded Cricinfo.com, and managed various aspects of the business until 2005. In 2004, he co-founded New Horizon Media, a Tamil book/magazine publishing company, which he is currently running. He is an avid blogger and blogs mostly in Tamil. He regularly participates in television discussion shows on politics and current affairs. He writes in various Tamil magazines on cricket, politics and education. Badri works with NSS students from College of Engineering, Guindy and has embarked on a project of documenting Tamil Nadu villages with the help of NSS volunteers.