Dr. Mrs. Banoo Coyaji receiving the 1993 Ramon Magsaysay Award from the President of Philippines.

The KEM Hospital Research Center has been publishing a Quarterly Newsletter since 1993.

An attempt has been made in the present issue of the Newsletter to provide a brief overview of some of the important projects completed by the scientists of the KEMHRC in the last 25 years. It appears as a Souvenir Volume of 25 years of KEMHRC.

From Very Small Beginnings.....
In 1972, when the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Pune, celebrated its Diamond Jubilee, a need was felt to further improve and expand its services – especially to the under–served. Therefore it was decided to start a rural health project in a poor drought prone area – Vadu Budruk in Shirur Taluka. The Diamond Jubilee committee, assigned the task of collecting funds, was advised by a well wisher to start a Research Society, as at that point of time there was a 133% tax exemption for all research work. Permission was granted in a short time and the first substantial donations were given by Mr. Khosla of Khosla Plastics and Mr. S. L. Kirloskar of the House of Kirloskar. We started in a small way with clinical and pathological research in the Khosla Endocrine Laboratory. This was the stimulus to start a separate society – The K. E. M. Hospital Research Center – under the direction of Dr. V. N. Rao, in 1973.

Our mission was to do research in subjects which affected our country and our people with emphasis on Maternal Child Health and Family Planning. Our vision was to strive for excellence and to encourage all our clinicians in doing quality research. The seed money was given by us in the first instance and if the quality was good, grants were sought from outside to support that research. We expanded rapidly and soon became a Human Reproduction Research Center of the ICMR. Our philosophy was that the agenda should always be ours and never donor driven.

An Advisory Committee under the Chairmanship of Prof. V. Ramalingaswamy ensured quality research both clinical and field operational. We have grown over the years, with multi–disciplinary research in various subjects such as: Maternal Mortality, Nutrition and Intra–Uterine Fetal Growth, Feeding and Growth of Low Birth Weight babies Integrated Delivery of Reproductive Health Care services at the district level, Contraceptive Trials, Adolescent Sexuality and Fertility, Integrated Programme on Early Detection of Childhood Disabilities, Women’s Health and Development, Characterization of Indian Diabetes, Indian Childhood Cirrhosis and other Liver Diseases, Male Involvement in Reproductive Health, Empowerment of Panchayati Raj Institutions etc.