A Winner All The Way

Dr SK Sama, Chairman and Executive Advisor, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, is a renowned gastroenterologist. In a freewheeling conversation with Sapna Dogra, Dr Sama talks about his childhood, profession, family and future plans

A man of steel: Dr SK Sama

A sickly child who always suffered from tummy problems and whose father insisted that he should take up humanities instead of science, Dr SK Sama defied all odds and emerged a winner. He not only took up medicine but reached the acme of his chosen specialty —gastroenterology. "Since childhood I had stomach problems, so I had decided to become a specialist of stomach ailments," says he.

Dr Sama's contributions in the field of gastro are too many to pen down. He has been a pioneer in identifying and treating liver diseases and his work on Hepatitis B virus and non-cirrhotic portal fibrosis have received international acclaim.

An Average Student

Born on May 31, 1934 in Firozepur, Dr Sama spent his childhood in Quetta, Rawalpindi and Lahore in Pakistan. His father was working as a Government clerk and later retired as an accounts officer. The young Dr Sama and his five siblings studied in DAV schools in Pakistan in an undivided India. Though it is hard to believe, Dr Sama claims that he was a ‘below average student who never liked to study'. "Often I was sick with problems like stomach infection and was not keen to study at all," he says.

In 1947, the partition forced the Sama family to shift base to Allahabad. The trauma of partition had a deep impact on Sama's mind and personality. "When we came to Allahabad, we had no assets whatsoever and life had to be started from scratch," he says with a pained expression. At Allahabad, Dr Sama was admitted to KP College in standard nine. His performance was dismal in the exams due to the change of school and place, coupled with the pain of leaving everything in Pakistan.

Defining Moment

Faring miserably in his exams was the defining moment of his life. His class teacher reprimanded him so harshly that something stirred inside him and he changed overnight. That night itself, he read the first textbook from cover to cover with rapt attention and then the next and then the next…

The teenager read all his textbooks of physics, mathematics and science. And when results were announced, he was amongst the first ten students in the final exams. "It was a surprise for everyone," says Dr Sama. "In fact, my principal was so shocked that he called me to his office and asked me if I had used some unfair means in the exams." However, the young and now confident Sama calmly urged him to ask any question from any textbook. That impressed the principal immensely. "After this incident, I became his favourite student," fondly remembers Dr Sama.

Making Of A Medico

After school, when the time came to join college, his father insisted he should take up arts because he wanted him to appear for the civil services exams, as was the trend then. "My father thought since I was not medically fit I would not be able to manage science," says Dr Sama. He joined the GMN College in Ambala in 1950 to pursue arts, but did not like it at all. So strong was his desire to take up science that along with humanities he used to study science subjects on his own.

But as luck would have it, one of his batchmates in hostel studying science, told him that he was unable to manage science and did not know what to do. Sama then suggested that they interchange subjects. Both friends went to the Principal, Jaswant Rai, and requested him to allow them to change their subjects. The principal agreed and Sama took up science in class 12 without informing his father. He scored remarkably well in FSc and stood first in Ambala city.

After that, he applied for medical college and got through in Jaipur Medical College and Ambala Medical College. However, he decided to join Amritsar Medical College and took admission in 1952. While in Medical College, he was active in co-curricular activities and also played hockey. "I was also a part of Jan Sangh, but not politically," he informs. He was also the secretary of Punjab chapter of the Youth Welfare Association. His favourite teacher and inspiration here was his medicine professor Dr KL Wig.

Towards An Illustrious Career

He passed out with an MBBS degree in 1957. However, due to limited seats he could not get residency in medicine. Therefore, Dr Sama left Amritsar and came to Delhi in 1958. He joined the Maulana Azad Medical College (erstwhile Irwin College) and did his residency in Medicine. Subsequently, he went to the UK for his MRCP.

After completing his MRCP, Dr Sama decided to go to the US to study gastroenterology. When he went to bid goodbye to his mentor Dr Wig (who was at AIIMS), he was asked to join the institute. Dr Sama agreed and joined AIIMS. Later he did his MD in medicine from here. Alongside, he also did a research project on liver diseases, which was internationally recognised and he started getting offers of jobs from national and international institutes.

Dr Sama with the President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam

Dr Sama talks about one offer from the prestigious Johns Hopkins Institute, which required him to do his residency in West Bengal. Due to some difference of opinion on work allocation and remuneration, he decided to remain at AIIMS.

In 1960, the Society of Gastroenterology was created of which Sama was a founder member. In 1966, his results on the disease 'non-serotic portal hypertension' were published and widely acknowledged. He set up the Gastroenterology Department at the GB Pant Hospital where he worked from 1964 to 1967. He came back to AIIMS as Assistant Professor in 1967. Thereafter, in 1970, he went to the US on a WHO fellowship on the behest of the same person who had offered him the Johns Hopkins job. He did his Fellowship at the Tufts University in Boston. While he learned a lot during his stay in the US, Dr Sama was dissatisfied with the hospital set-up as it was not equipped like AIIMS to treat the vast stream of patients suffering from alcoholic liver diseases, which was not common in India then. However, he says, in all, it was a good experience working with the Americans and visiting the best centres of liver diseases.

In 1971, he came back to AIIMS and started his research work on Hepatitis B. Soon he started getting invites to various panel discussions. He also had the honour of sharing the dais with the Nobel laureate Dr Baruch S Blumberg in the '70s. Dr Sama's stint with AIIMS ended in 1974 after he had a difference with a senior. He quit the institute against the wishes of his friends and the director of the institute.

Nurturing Of SGRH

In 1974, Dr Sama joined the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) when late Dharam Vira handed over the management to a few doctors from LNJP Hospitals and AIIMS. "The deal was that in lieu of management, we were to make the hospital financially viable without compromising on the values laid down by the founders," he informs.

In conjunction, he also started his laboratory at his residence because there was a lack of well-equipped laboratories in private sector.

Dr Sama with Chief Minister of New Delhi, Shiela Dixit

SGRH was a sick, 50-bed entity then. Dr Sama worked non-stop for 12 hours daily. Meanwhile, he kept visiting the US to keep abreast of the latest developments. In 1976, he took over SGRH from the trust along with 18 other doctors. All of them contributed Rs one lakh each to create a fund and it was agreed that all consultant doctors of the hospital would contribute about 33 per cent of their income for the charitable work of the hospital. This was the start of a golden era for SGRH. "The challenge was to set up greater and better standards than AIIMS. And we were ahead of AIIMS in gastroenterology in terms of equipment," he informs with pride.

When Sama had taken over, the turnover of SGRH was Rs 30 crore, which he raised to Rs 200 crore with a surplus of Rs 30 crore used to set up Dr Dharmveer Heart Centre. The Centre was set up in 1977 with basic facilities for monitoring and treatment of patients. Over the years, the department acquired a sophisticated intensive coronary care unit, non-invasive lab for echo, TMT, holter monitoring and tilt table test.

All these years, Dr Sama worked in various capacities from a treasurer to the chairperson of SGRH and this year he took over a new role as Trustee and Executive Advisor.

Liver Transplant Programme At SGRH

While at SGRH, Dr Sama made sure that the hospital had the latest equipment and technology and all endoscopic procedures were available here. For this, he kept buying medical accessories from the US from his own pocket. Today, the department is in the limelight in the country as well as in South Asia.

He was able to get aboard experts like Dr S Nandi and Dr Subhash Gupta from AIIMS to do gastro and liver surgeries. Soon after, he invited Dr A Sion, a liver transplant surgeon from Apollo, to join SGRH.

The hospital started a liver transplant programme in 1995. But it was not that successful. The mortality rate was very high due to high infection rate. "Liver transplant needs top line operation theatres, a four-room set and a central monitoring system for recovery of transplant patients," says he. Upon realising this, appropriate measures were taken and thus began the road to success.

In 2005, the living donor liver transplant programme was initiated when the new building was made. Today, SGRH has become a major renal transplantation centre with over 650 live transplants in 10 years with a success rate of 87 per cent through live donors. The department is one of very few in the country that has an established state-of-the-art facility for liver transplantation for adults and children using cadaveric as well as living donors.

SGRH endeavours to provide world-class care to such patients at a small fraction of its cost abroad. The department consists of faculty who have trained and worked extensively in the best centres of the world in the UK, Japan and South Korea, and have earned international acclaim in clinical liver transplantation and research and have subsequently pioneering achievements in liver transplantation in India in the recent years.

In the meantime, Sama set up Sama Nursing Home in 1982 for his wife, Kavita, who was working with Safdarjung Hospital at that time. He married Kavita, a gynaecologist in 1962. Dr Sama is very proud of his children, who have done well for themselves in their careers and life. Though Dr Sama is reluctant to talk about his personal life, one cannot miss the pride and pleasure that creep into his expression when he talks about their achievements. His elder son Alok, a topper throughout his school and college, is a venture capitalist in the UK and is coming to India soon. His second son Vivek is an orthopaedic surgeon, but got into management and now he is all set up to start a healthcare company. And his youngest son Nikhil is an engineer.

Achievements

On being asked about his achievements, Dr Sama says, "To be able to give the best of education to my children and help them become good human beings is my biggest personal achievement." Also, the way SGRH has grown over the years and its success makes him very proud. And thirdly, love and respect that is bestowed on him by the public at large and the medical fraternity also bring a feeling of contentment inside him.

Now, his sole aim is to propagate holistic medicine. He is the founder chairperson of the World Academy of Spiritual Sciences (WASS). SGRH is scientifically attempting to connect spirituality with modern medicine in a holistic manner, says he.

At the end of the interview, I could not help saluting the die-hard spirit of Dr Sama, which makes him ever active and a visionary par excellence, a far cry from the young sickly child that he was once!

sapnadogra@gmail.com