THE CHANGE-MAKER
Dr Hema Divakar
When I was a young student, it was a given,
“ladki hai toh doctor, ladka hai toh engineer” (girls will grow up to be doctors and boys, engineers),’ smiles the multiple award-winning Dr Hema Divakar, who also comes from a family of doctors, including her grandfather and a couple of uncles and aunts. ‘I would tag along with my grandfather, hang around his clinic, observe what he did. So when the time came, it all fell very naturally into place and I just went with the flow.’ Dr Hema, who was born and brought up in Mumbai, studied medicine at Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College (GSMC), Mumbai. ‘I loved surgery and was fascinated by the surgical challenges being an ob-gyn would offer,’ she says. Contrary to her image circa 2021, women’s health or empowerment had very little to do with her choice of specialization.
‘It was all about the temptation of wielding a knife,’ she
admits. Dr Hema completed her MD in Obstetrics and
Gynaecology in 1989 from Wadia Maternity Hospital
in Mumbai.
Her marriage brought Dr Hema to Bangalore, where
she set up Divakar’s Speciality Hospital in 1990. ‘I
wanted to do things my own way, which is why I started
my own hospital,’ she says. ‘Even though I was brought
up in Mumbai, my mother tongue is Kannada, which I
am fluent in, so my patients feel comfortable with me.’
Her conversations with her patients brought out the
many issues they faced, and before she knew it, being
an ob-gyn was no longer just about wielding a knife, but
about concern and passion for caring about women’s
health. ‘I saw women struggling to fulfil even their
most basic healthcare needs and I saw them struggling
to make independent decisions about their bodies and
their health,’ says Dr Hema. ‘“What can I do?”; “What
can we do?”; “What can we do with others?” I began
seeking answers to these questions. And what I realized
was that we need to connect and collaborate.’
Over the last three decades, Dr Hema has been
spurred on by this very idea of establishing connections and collaborating. Through her practice and the
multiple campaigns she has driven, she has been
exposed to cross-sectional stakeholders and has built
associations with the likes of Melinda Gates and
Oprah Winfrey. ‘Reach every girl, every woman,
connect and collaborate,’ she says. ‘Our country is so
complex and so big, that even if a thousand campaigns
come together, it’s just a drop in the ocean.’ And so,
Dr Hema is focused on building a skilled healthcare
workforce and enabling pertinent policy change. ‘If
we don’t make our voices heard or don’t reach out
to the policymakers, we won’t be able to bring about
change,’ she believes. ‘We need to harness human
resource, channelize potential and motivate people to
use their power to affect change. Skilling is the need of
the hour.’ In 2013, as president of FOGSI, Dr Hema
was instrumental in the release of a report titled ‘Skill
India’, which advocated and laid an outline for skill
development in the healthcare sector. In fact, in 2018,
Divakar’s Speciality Hospital was identified as a Centre
for Skill Enhancement (CSE), and has since leveraged
technology to train over 300 private facilities across Karnataka, Rajasthan, Assam, Manipur, Punjab,
Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
About a decade ago, Dr Hema decided she wanted
her work to go beyond just providing healthcare. She
wanted her work to create a larger, lasting social impact.
And so, she set up the hospital’s research wing, the
Asian Research and Training Institute for Skill Transfer
(ARTIST). ‘To create real social impact, I had to move
beyond my hospital and metro cities and reach the
grassroots,’ she says. ARTIST is dedicated to innovative
research, national policy changes and skill transfer,
with an eye on the socio-politico-economic dynamics
that are unique to India, and how existing global
solutions need to be adapted to the Indian context and
thereafter suitably implemented. It brings together
healthcare professionals, leaders of organizations, key
opinion makers, researchers, academicians and leading
clinicians. ‘Our mission is to fill data gaps and affect
pertinent policy change, for better health outcomes as
well as to bring technical know-how to those who need
it,’ says Dr Hema. ‘Through my work I’ve realized the
extent of the work that’s going on in India, and the kind
of work that needs to be done, still.’
One of Dr Hema’s key focus areas has been what
she calls ‘respectful maternity care’. ‘30 million women
deliver babies every day,’ she informs. ‘Just caring isn’t
enough. Genuine concern is important. The least we can
do, as healthcare workers, is to be gentle with them,
treat them with consideration and respect. Soft skills
are so important in helping patients cope with whatever
they’re dealing with.’ As president of FOGSI, she was
one of the biggest champions of Manyata, an initiative
that aims to positively impact maternal health outcomes
in India. ‘There should be no reason for a woman to
not have access to quality maternal care services,’ she
believes. ‘All our efforts are directed towards ensuring
no woman dies while giving birth to a new life.’
Dr Hema has also been a member of the Technical
Advisory Group to the Ministry of Maternal Health and
Family Planning. She is also vice-chair of the Pregnancy
and Non-Communicable Diseases committee at FIGO,
besides being FOGSI’s ambassador to FIGO.
Her quest to do better led Dr Hema to pursue a
postgraduate diploma in Medical Law and Ethics
and another in Preventive and Promotive Healthcare.
‘Yesterday’s problems, we’re solving today, and today’s problems, we have no idea about,’ she rues. ‘We need
to build up preventive healthcare with the view that
when we prevent illness, we promote wellness.’ To do
this effectively, she believes we need to get a handle on
statistics and data, which is wanting in our country.
‘Obesity is at 37 per cent; diabetes is on the rise; the lack
of awareness and moral policing around contraception
– which is really preventive healthcare for abortion and
STDs and needs to be seen as such – is worrying,’ she
states. ‘Unfortunately, our priority is daily living, and
our mindset is one of “let’s cross the bridge when we get
to it”. And this is worse for women. There is so much
misinformation, they often perceive every little symptom
as cancer. But instead of getting medical advice, they
get scared and apprehensive. Sometimes, their families
put them down. And because daily living can be such
a struggle for so many, even those who want to get the
care they need, can’t always afford it.’
To help bring preventive healthcare to the forefront,
Dr Hema’s work at ARTIST has brought forth the
ABCDE of women’s healthcare: A is for anaemia
among adolescent and pregnant women; B is for
building contraceptive choices; C is for cervical cancer screening with mobile messaging; D is for diabetes care
programmes; and E is for emergency obstetric care skill
drills. ‘We need to look at healthcare in a wholesome
manner, because nothing can be fixed in isolation,’
she asserts. ‘Women should enter their pregnancy in
the pink of health, to ensure a smooth pregnancy and
safe delivery. But the way women are made to feel
when they go to a healthcare facility, they just end up
delaying it. In spite of cervical and breast cancer being
either preventable or curable, patients come to us in
very advanced stages.’ Dr Hema has also been working
extensively with FOGSI to bring these into mainstream
healthcare.
While most medical professionals have wised up
to the possibilities offered by social media and digital
platforms only during the pandemic, Dr Hema has
been on the ball for a very long time now, through
her research work as well as through her practice.
‘You could say it’s been a passion with me, the digital
media – your outreach increases manifold,’ she says.
‘We need to evolve with the changing times and with
changing circumstances and constantly try to do
better.’ She has been using various digital platforms to stay available to her patients, even as she works her
way through her other endeavours. Dr Hema has also
used digital media to disseminate information on a
variety of issues, ranging from menopausal health and
diabetes to sexual health and sexual abuse, creating
blogs, podcasts, animations and videos. ‘We need to
involve the youth in their own well-being, and I’ve
found digital platforms to be extremely effective in
doing so,’ she says. ‘Our education system, which is
not youth-friendly at all, has been failing them. Only
about 5 per cent of the information they get is from
healthcare workers, or trained, reliable sources. The
rest is all from friends or the internet, but given that
the internet takes the lion’s share, with 55 per cent of
their knowledge coming from the web, we have really
focused on tapping into that.’ Through their various
collaborations and creations, we have been able to reach
as many as 4 million young girls across the country,
while bringing contraception and making it available
to 30 per cent women of reproductive age, as opposed
to an earlier mere 2 per cent.
Through the last three decades, Dr Hema has
remained passionate and motivated about all the work she’s been doing. ‘These are key elements – those who
work on a project should also own it,’ she believes. ‘I
find inculcating this to be a huge challenge because there
is so much mediocracy. Quality has to be maintained,
otherwise your project won’t last.’ As a healthcare
worker, Dr Hema believes taking pride in the work you
do is imperative. ‘Someone out there is alive today, only
because a doctor did their best, gave them their best,
and we need to be alive to that,’ she says. ‘I didn’t set
out to achieve anything, but I was driven, I had passion
and I had a purpose. It’s been a continuous journey
that I can, today, look back upon with satisfaction and
that I look forward to with determination.’ Dr Hema is
recipient of the FIGO Women Achievers Award 2015,
in recognition of her contribution to the development of
science and scientific research in the field of gynaecology
and obstetrics. Besides multiple awards for Lifetime
Achievement, she was also chosen Global Asian of the
Year, 2018.
