Close X
Sunday, January 12, 2025
ADVT 
International

Indian-Origin Physician Abraham Varghese Gets National Humanities Medal In US

Darpan News Desk IANS, 23 Sep, 2016 11:12 AM
    An Indian-American physician and author has been presented with the National Humanities Medal, America's highest humanities award by US President Barack Obama for his contribution in the field of medicine.
     
    Currently a professor of medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine, Abraham Varghese has authored several acclaimed books including 'My Own Country' and 'Cutting for Stone'.
     
    He was presented with the medal along with several other recipients at a ceremony held at the White House yesterday.
     
    "The 2015 National Humanities Medal to Abraham Verghese for reminding us that the patient is the center of the medical enterprise," the citation of medal read.
     
    "His range of proficiency embodies the diversity of the humanities, from his efforts to emphasize empathy in medicine, to his imaginative renderings of the human drama," a military aide to the US President said, reading from the citation.
     
    "All of today's honorees work in an age where the stories we tell and the technologies that we use to tell them are more diverse than ever before, and as diverse as the country that we love," Obama said on the occasion.
     
    Started in 1997, the National Humanities Medal "honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens' engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities subjects".
     
    As many as 12 medals are awarded each year. Mr Verghese is a critically acclaimed, best-selling author and a physician with an international reputation for his emphasis on empathy for patients in an era in which technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine, the Stanford University said in a statement.
     
    "I felt strongly then and now that what I was writing about, and my interest in the human experience of being ill or caring for the ill, was as much a part of medicine as knowledge of the function of the pancreas, for example," Mr Verghese, also a vice chair of Stanford's Department of Medicine, said.
     
    He also directs the Stanford interdisciplinary center, Presence, which reflects these interests.
     
    Born in Addis Ababa in 1955, Mr Verghese's parents were recruited by Emperor Haile Selassie to teach in Ethiopia.
     
    He grew up near the capital and began his medical training there. When the emperor was deposed, Mr Verghese briefly joined his parents who had moved to the United States because of the war, working as an orderly in a hospital before completing his medical education in India at Madras Medical College.
     
    After graduation, he left India for a medical residency in the United States and like many other foreign medical graduates, he found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him, an experience he described in one of his early New Yorker articles, The Cowpath to America.

    MORE International ARTICLES

    UK Teenager Raped, Stabbed After Being Dragged Out Of Eatery

    UK Teenager Raped, Stabbed After Being Dragged Out Of Eatery
    In a horrific incident, a 17-year-old girl in the UK was raped and stabbed in the stomach after being dragged out of a restaurant by a man in a "violent and pre-planned attack" in a busy town centre.

    UK Teenager Raped, Stabbed After Being Dragged Out Of Eatery

    Orlando Gunman Omar Mateen Was Fired From Prison Guard School For Gun Joke

      In 2007, the Department of Corrections employed Mateen and financed his schooling at Indian River State College to become an officer. But it lasted only six months.

    Orlando Gunman Omar Mateen Was Fired From Prison Guard School For Gun Joke

    Pregnant Teens In Australia Take Up Smoking To Have Smaller Babies: Study

    Pregnant Teens In Australia Take Up Smoking To Have Smaller Babies: Study
    Pregnant teens in Australia are deliberately taking up smoking to help them reduce the birth weight of their unborn babies and make childbirths less dangerous and painful, a shocking new research has found.

    Pregnant Teens In Australia Take Up Smoking To Have Smaller Babies: Study

    International day of yoga at France, La Villette

    International day of yoga at France, La Villette
    More than 2000 Yoga enthusiasts of all ages participated in these celebrations at La Villette in Paris. 

    International day of yoga at France, La Villette

    British Prime Minister David Cameron Invokes India In Anti-Brexit Debate

    The rise of countries like India and China...[means we have] big economies that we need to trade with more.

    British Prime Minister David Cameron Invokes India In Anti-Brexit Debate

    Going Abroad On A Short Visit, Tweets Rahul Gandhi

    Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi today said he is going abroad for a "few days", but did not specify the country he is heading for.

    Going Abroad On A Short Visit, Tweets Rahul Gandhi