CANCER INSTITUTE, CHENNAI - A PROFILE

The Cancer Institute celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2004. The Institute has come a long way from the 12-bedded cottage hospital to a 423-bedded Comprehensive cancer center with all the four wings of a Modern establishment - The Hospital, the Research Center, the College of Oncological Sciences and the Preventive Oncology Center.

When Dr Muthulakshmy Reddy, India's first woman medical graduate and a social reformer, started the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai in 1954, it was the only cancer hospital in south India. Established with public donations as a voluntary, charitable and non-profit institution, it started with a single building. There were minimal diagnostic and therapeutic facilities, with a cluster of 12 huts to house patients. It also had just two doctors -- Dr Krishnamurthy (who was Dr Muthulakshmy Reddy's son) and Dr Shanta.

Through all these years, the principal ethos of the Institute has remained intact and vibrant - "providing the state of art management in cancer care to all the patients entering its portal, irrespective of their caste, creed or socio-economic status". This has been made possible by the long list of Donors, Supporters, Volunteers and the dedicated staff of the Institute.

For Dr V Shanta,Chairman, Cancer Institute, the hospital is her home. It is her temple, a place where she has spent all her life. It comes as a surprise to few, then, that she is this year's Magsaysay award winner.Dr Shanta's dream for the hospital is that the next generation to take over the hospital shouldn't face the obstacles and frustrations she and the seniors did. Her second dream is to popularize early cancer detection programs; her third, to enhance the hospitals research capabilities.

Cancer Institute moves on carrying its pioneering work with a driving force that says, "The journey has been long. We don't see an end to it, simply because our work is never ending. What we have done is very little. There is much more to do. The journey has been arduous, with bricks and stones and occasional flowers strewn in between, but we continue…"

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