PROF. [DR.] SURESH H ADVANI

The journey of Becoming The Best Cancer Doctor in India

Journey – Destiny’s Child

Advani was born on August 1, 1947, in Karachi. His family — parents, three brothers and three sisters — had to flee to India on August 15 due to Partition. They came first to Deolali, Nashik, and then to Mumbai a few years later thanks to his father’s electrical business. Advani, who used to walk until the mid-1950s.

Despite odds, he moved on in life pretty fast. For someone who had to flee his home when he was merely 15 days old, Advani rose to become the chief of medical oncology at the Tata Memorial Hospital and he also set up the oncology department at Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai — and he is currently the chief medical and paediatric oncologist and heamato-oncologist at Jaslok Hospital.

Education – Breaking the ceiling

For Advani, one of India’s best oncologists who won the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian award, battling odds wasn’t anything new. Back in 1965, after finishing school — at that time it was the inter-college degree — he applied for admission to medicine at Grant Medical College, but was rejected. They didn’t want a “crippled” person.

But he wasn’t ready to give up: he wrote to the hospital authorities, ministers and others, requesting their intervention. Finally, Grant Medical College relented and he went on to pursue an MBBS as a day scholar. He had a person to help him get onto the wheelchair and he often took a cab to his parents’ home in the Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar, where he continues to live even now.

As a young boy Dr. Advani used his powers of persuasion to convince the dean of the college to admit him to the MBBS course. Inspite his physical condition his mind is extremely fertile. As a student Advani won countless distinctions and awards.

Degree

MBBS, MD (General Medicine), FICP, MNAMS, FNAMS

Inspiration

• Being a handicapped person, his achievements are core inspiration to many doctors, patients and people who know him.
• His dedication, passion and commitment to fight cancer made him one of the best oncologists in the world.
• Being a cancer healer Advani has faced many challenges in his life and has went past it with his smile, dedication, and positivity.

Great Aspirations

Advani didn’t have any great ambition until he was hospitalised with polio. In the 1950s there were hardly any drugs to treat the disease. But the interactions he had with doctors at a Mumbai hospital where he spent “a few months” blew his mind. He wanted to be a doctor like them, who went on to train himself at Royal Marsden Hospital in London after his brief stint at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital after completing his MD.

By then, he had chosen a branch of medicine that wasn’t seen then as sexy: oncology. “After his MD, Advani got a job at Tata Memorial in 1974. At that time there was a lacuna in this branch [oncology] — people thought it was not really worth pursuing it.

Later, he travelled to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle where he says he was lucky enough to work with the likes of Dr E Donnall Thomas — known as the father of bone-marrow transplantation — who won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1990. There, he specialised in bone-marrow transplants.

In India

Advani is known to be the first oncologist in India to have successfully done a bone-marrow transplant. He transplanted bone marrow into a nine-year-old girl down with myeloid leukaemia from her brother. He was also a part of clinical trials to help children with lymphoblastic leukaemia. Conducted on 1,200 patients, the trials helped raise success rates in treatment from 20% to 70%.

Being crippled doesn’t stop him….

Advani and hard work are constant companions: he is at one Hospital in the morning and at another Hospital in the evenings. He at times also flies down from one city to another and one hospital to another to see his patients. He makes it sound as if he walked to that place. None of his colleagues and patients seems to think he is physically challenged anymore because he has overcome all such hurdles. Dr. Advani who makes hard work look easy is an oncologist who is an independent consultant with several hospitals.

“He is a healer and a role model for aspiring medical students and also for those who are physically challenged. He not only sailed through all difficulties but also excelled in his field.”

On Cancer & Treatment

Dr. Advani never fails to inspire his patients. Keeping a person’s hope alive is as important as treatment in the case of cancer. He understands it only too well. Advani has seen the branch of medicine — oncology — grow in India right before his eyes. He started off at the time when oncology was looked down upon by most medical specialists as a “less lucrative area”.