CMC loses alumnus to Nepal air crash

VELLORE: An alumnus of the Christian Medical College (CMC), Dr Pankaj Mehta and his wife Dr Chaya Mehta were among the 19, who died in the Sunday’s plane crash at Khatmandu, in Nepal.On Tuesday, during the inauguration of the second edition of an advanced course in Vaccinology, the faculty and students of the department of Community Medicine at CMC, which had organised for the vaccinology course, were shocked after they got the news about the death of one of the alumnus of their department.Pankaj did his MBBS at CMC Vellore in 1972 and later did his MD in Community Medicine here. He worked at the Ramaiah Medical College in Bangalore before joining the UNICEF in Kolkata. For the last five years he was working as the Nutrition specialist at UNICEF country office in Khatmandu in Nepal.There were talks that Mehta was all set to take charge of his new assignment at UNICEF’s office at the Philippines next week. During their last week in Nepal, the couple had planned for a trip to the Mt Everest.Some of his teachers at CMC remembered him as a warm and studious person during his days at the CMC, and remained so, later also.Former Principal of CMC Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, who joined the department of Community Medicine as a faculty when Pankaj was a PG student then, recalled that he (Mehta) was very much interested in health issues, especially connected with children.Muliyil said, “Those days medicos rarely opted for a career in community medicine.But I think Pankaj had the urge to do something for the problems faced by the community which he had later pursued to find solutions on a global scale through his career in UNICEF.” Meanwhile, the alma mater in a message sent to the two sons Kayur Mehta and Dhaval Mehta expressed its condolence to them.Pankaj was the first doctor in his family. But he has already inspired his first son, Kayur, a MBBS student from St. John’s Medical College in 2008, to pursue MD in Paediatrics at BP Koirala Medical College, at Dharan, Nepal. The second son Dhaval is a 3rd term undergraduate student of Environmental Engineering in the USA.