Liver foundation's tryst with Nobel winner Abhijit Banerjee

KOLKATA: Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee will attend a Liver Foundation West Bengal (LFWB) programme on October 22 in the national capital and share his thoughts on the scarcity of trained health workers in India. Banerjee’s association with LFWB goes a long way back — as early as 2010 — when he was a part of the study that revealed how training of informal medical practitioners (IMP) can not only enrich their knowledge but also address the shortage of trained doctors in rural Bengal.

“We had been training these IMPs and we needed someone to ratify what we were doing. Known for off-thetrack ventures, Banerjee readily agreed to do the impact evaluation of the study when we had approached him in 2010,” said Abhijit Chowdhury , secretary of LFWB and the hepatology head at SSKM Hospital.

Chowdhury said though letting these IMPs or ‘quacks’, as they are referred to, practise is not the ideal situation, they are a reality.

“India has not been able to eliminate them. Therefore, training them as model for transition will ensure harm reduction as the people in rural Bengal will continue to get basic medical care,” said Chowdhury.

The Ford International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology went to Birbhum several times between 2013 and 2014 to co-author the study. Later, the study was published in Science Journal in October 2016. But he had been involved in the planning of the study since 2010.

Later, Banerjee and Chowdhury met the then state health secretary Malay De to bring the research into policy transition. The state health department started training these IMPs from 2017.

“Banerjee came to meet me with Chowdhury to explain why the government needed to train these IMPs. One might not like the idea but the ground reality is they thrive in rural India. And hence, it is better to enhance their knowledge while imposing on them what they are not supposed to be doing. So, I was convinced with Banerjee’s explanations,” De told TOI. He attained superannuation as West Bengal chief secretary a few weeks ago.

Those who were associated with Banerjee during the project remembered him as a humble person.

“To me, he is a living example of high thinking and simple living. He didn’t have any airs when I had the opportunity to interact with him. No wonder he has won the Nobel prize,” said Sanjit Ganguly of Ilambazar’s Koyra, who had attended training sessions on IMPs. The state has around 1,07,000 IMPs. Approximately, 8,000 have been trained so far.

“The October 22 meet at India International Centre was finalised long before Banerjee was selected for the Nobel prize. We are extremely proud that he has bagged the prize,” said Partha Satrathi Mukherjee, director of LFWB.