Empowering Women Through Health Education

Yesterday, the Institute of Social Sciences inaugurated its celebrations for the 19th Women's Political Empowerment Day. The venue for the 2-day celebrations is the International Youth Center. This year's theme is 'Panchayats, Women and Health for All'. I was invited to speak yesterday on a health topic of my choice.

There were two plenary sessions for 24th April. The other speaker for the plenary session I was participating in, was Dr Madhulika Banerjee from Delhi University. Dr Banerjee spoke about mainstreaming  AYUSH and revitalizing local health traditions. The speaker during the second plenary system was Dr Meeta Pattnaik, MD, Transtek Clinical System. She was supposed to speak on the role of telemedicine in rural diagnostic services.

The sessions were being attended by nearly 400 women who have been recently elected into the Grama Panchayats. They represented 19 states of India. Both AYUSH and telemedicine were important topic for them.

I usually speak on cancer  and other non-communicable diseases. I titled my presentation for yesterday 'Empowering Women for Early Detection of Cancer' and spoke on how women can be taught to detect breast and cervical cancer at the earliest. I briefed them about the simplest screening methods for the two most common cancers among Indian women. I also spoke about HPV vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer. Here are some pictures from the session.

A Fine Writer ... Gone?

It's still sinking in ... slowly. He was one of the best writers in my team. 

We had done only a few projects together. But last week when my client from Europe got back with some repeat business, the only name that came to my mind was his. It had been a few months since we worked together on a project...but that was the only writer I could think of then. 

I tracked down his last mail to me and wrote to him about how happy the client was with the project we had done for her last year. That she wanted us to do her project this year too. And I was pretty clear who I wanted to delegate this project to. 

It had to be him. The young Indian student at Pittsburgh who had done her project last year too. I wrote to him. I usually write to a group of writers and ask them about their interest and availability for a particular project and then subcontract the project to one of them. But this time, I wrote only to him. I was sure I wanted him to write this one. 

He did not reply my mail yesterday. It is a weekend and I thought he was probably not checking his gmail account. So I wrote to him again this morning asking him to reply back by EOD today. But I don't know why I had no patience. 

He was a friend on Facebook. So I wrote on his Facebook Timeline asking him to check his mail and reply ASAP. I knew if he was not available it would take me some time to select another writer who would be just as good. I was also considering doing the project on my own if I did not get a positive response from him. 

Just then I happened to read other posts on his Facebook wall and it was clear to me that he was no more. He had left this world a few weeks back. I don't know what happened or how. 

I lost one of my best writers and a friend.

I will miss you. Rest in peace! 

Starting the New Year with a Medical Writing Workshop

This looks like a good start for a new year. Tomorrow I am going to Hyderabad for a 2-day medical writing workshops being conducted by Indian Society for Clinical Research (ISCR). The workshops are on 4th and 5th. There's an workshop on regulatory writing, one on ethics in medical writing and one on scientific manuscript writing.

I am conducting a workshop on 5th Jan on the basic skills of medical writing. This will be about the different forms of medical writing, planning to customize the writing as per the reader, how to carry out an effective literature search, how to organize the matter, and how to write and format the article. I will also be covering briefly about health writing for the web and some SEO tricks to use to get readers to read your article on the Web.

There are over 40 people who have registered for this workshop and I am hoping to have a good interactive session with them.

I also look forward to meeting some old friends at Hyderabad.

Breast Health Workshop at JMC, Delhi

I am on my way to Jesus and Mary College once again. I am conducting a Breast Health Workshop there for about a hundred students of the non-collegiate education department.

This is my second trip to JMC and it brings back so many memories. My first health awareness talk was delivered ten years ago to the students of JMC on the 13th of December, 2001. I spoke on Menstrual Health.

How do I remember the date so well? Well, there is a story behind it. I was new in Delhi. Had heard that it was an unsafe city but life for me had been pretty safe till that day. After I was done with the talk, I was taken to the canteen for some refreshments but soon enough was asked to leave the college campus. There was panic everywhere...people were rushing home. I took an autorickshaw back home and there were police checking on almost all roads. Roads were clogged. How happy I was to be back home with my little daughter!

That fateful day, the Indian Parliament House was under terrorist attack. It was my first brush with the terror in Delhi and how things fell back to normal after a few hours of commotion. After that I have heard of many terror attacks in Delhi but I guess we have 'got used to it' by now. The fear has never been as great as that particular day in December.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is the Breast Cancer Awareness month. You may have been hearing and reading a lot about breast cancer already. Do you sometimes feel that you are being overloaded with information about breast cancer? And the pink campaign is all a big farce?

There is a lot of discussion about it worldwide. But back here in India, we still have a long way to go where breast cancer awareness is concerned.

True... breast cancer is not as common here as in the US and Europe (where one in seven women has it). But it is disheartening to read the WHO (World Health Organization) report that less than 5% of Indian women between 50 and 70 years of age underwent a screening mammogram. Even those who underwent a screening mammogram rarely followed it up with another mammogram.

Clinical breast examination is also not something women get on a regular basis. Most women here still consider breast health a taboo topic and are not comfortable getting their breasts examined when they are apparently 'healthy'. Even when they are ready to go for a clinical breast examination they start looking for a female doctor...and it has to be a doctor that she and her family knows well.

There are breast clinics in major cities but very few to cater to the millions of Indian women. Moreover, not too many women walk into breast clinics unless they are continuously stimulated with breast cancer awareness programs and write-ups.

As we talk about breast cancer awareness, I thought of sharing my earlier article on the common myths about breast cancer. Hope you find it helpful.

Recorded for the Webinar

The recording for the webinar for the medical writing festival went well last night. Joann was logged in from Pennsylvania, Jonathan from California and I  was logged in from Delhi. We recorded a promotional video for my webinar and also the presentation on Medical Writing in India.

The webinar goes LIVE on 28/9/11 at 7:30 PM Indian time. Jonathan and I shall be there to answer any questions that the participants might have. If you cannot watch it at that time or want to watch it again, you can watch the ON DEMAND REPLAY too.

I am hoping I can attend all the webinars. There are over a dozen of them lined up. There are different webinar packages to choose and there is the a la carta option too.

We will see you at the Medical Writing Festival. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Medical Writing Festival

I am looking forward to the Medical Writing Festival this Sep/Oct where I talk about Medical Writing in India.


This is a first of its kind festival for medical writers across the world. It is a series of 14 webinars with 11 speakers from different continents. People from 25 different countries have shown an interest in the Festival so far.


My webinar interview goes LIVE on 28/9/2011. And it's being recorded too for future REPLAYS on demand. 

The series runs from September 12 – October 7, 2011. There are over a dozen webinars on offer and some early bird discounts if one registers by September 7, 2011. 

You can learn all about it at this website.

When you get there, make sure you enter your name and email to get more information.

https://inquill.infusionsoft.com/go/10nidn11/Iq09mwf11/