New Delhi: Dr Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavati, India’s first woman cardiologist who died due to Covid-19 last week, left behind an enduring legacy in her field.

Not only had she founded the All India Heart Foundation in 1962 and the National Heart Institute in 1981 (NHI), but also set up the cardiology department at G.B. Pant Hospital in 1967. Prior to this, she had established North India’s first cardiac catheterisation laboratory at the Lady Hardinge Medical College in 1954.

Padmavati, who succumbed to the novel coronavirus Saturday night at 103 years, was popularly known as the ‘Godmother of Cardiology‘.  Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan took to Twitter Monday to pay his tributes.

Speaking to ThePrint, Dr O.P. Yadava, chief cardiac surgeon and chief executive officer at NHI, said she was hospitalised for 11 days prior to her death. She died at 11.09 pm Saturday.

“Till the very end she had a zest for life and was mentally astute,” recalled Yadava.

In a statement Sunday, the NHI said she developed pneumonia in both lungs and needed ventilator support.

In the absence of children or husband, Yadava explained, the NHI took permission from her distant nephews and conducted her last rites. He also said Dr Padmavati had placed her lifetime earnings in a trust that she and her sister (Janaki, who was a neurologist) had founded. Called the Janaki-Padmavati Foundation, it provides free heart surgeries to financially-poor patients.

Dr Padmavati was born in Myanmar in 1917, a year before the Spanish flu hit the world. She had three brothers and two sisters, one of whom was Janaki.

ThePrint tells out more about India’s first woman cardiologist, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1992, among many other awards.

Refusing special treatment to P.V. Narasimha Rao

Yadava remembered his first impression of Dr Padmavati when he was a first-year MBBS student at the Maulana Azad Medical College (of which she was the director at the time).

“Here was an upright lady who stood for the profession and took pride in herself as a cardiologist, which ended up making us feel proud to be in an institution she headed,” he said.

After his student days were over, Yadava once again crossed paths with Dr Padmavati in the 1990s when he was a junior cardiac surgeon at the NHI. Dr Padmavati was the chief cardiac surgeon at the institute then.

He recalled an incident that took place at the time and which, he said, went to shape how he viewed her as well as the profession.

Frank Anthony, who was a member of the Rajya Sabha, was admitted to the NHI in a critical state and former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was scheduled to pay him a visit, said Yadava.

“Then suddenly, we saw security personnel and sniffer dogs coming inside the hospital, even inside the ICU and inspecting patients. When we inquired why this was happening, we got to know that the Prime Minister was coming … therefore such security protocols were taking place,” Yadava said.

But Dr Padmavati, he added, barged out of her room and told the security personnel that if sniffer dogs were going to enter the hospital and come inside the ICU to inspect patients then she did not want the Prime Minister to come.

“This showed us how much she respected her patients, the hospital and her profession,” Yadava added.

He further noted that though she was a female icon, Dr Padmavati did not believe in a women versus men concept. “Which is why she impacted everyone immensely. She was a cardiologist of substance.”

In an article earlier, Dr Padmavati recalled how setting up of the cardiac catheterisation laboratory at Lady Hardinge Medical College had “angered old timers who looked at Lady Hardinge as a women’s bastion”.

Escape from Myanmar

Dr Padmavati did her MBBS at the Rangoon Medical College where she was the first female student. She, however, left for India in 1942 during World War II when Japan invaded Burma.

In an earlier interview, the famed cardiologist said, “We had to run for our lives, literally…my parents were told to vacate the house in 24 hours. My father was there for many, many years. Then we had to fly out from Mergui by the last flight. The men were left behind and only the women went. Things were quite bad.”

She lived with her mother and sister in Coimbatore and when the war ended, in 1945, the family was reunited.

Padmavati soon left for her postgraduate studies in London. She was a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians, London, and the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh.

She later joined the Johns Hopkins University in the US and trained under Dr Helen Taussig. Thereafter, she went to study under Dr Paul Dudley White at the Harvard Medical School for four years, in 1952. White is widely regarded as the father of modern cardiology.

It was White who later encouraged Padmavati to set up the All India Heart Foundation, according to Yadava.

Noting her contributions to the medical fraternity, Yadava said it was her who got the fifth World Congress of Cardiology to Delhi in 1966, of which she was also the president.

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