S.I. Padmavathi

There are still good things on Twitter that aren't something I see anywhere else.

Here's one of them (edited somewhat for length) from Dr Jaison Philip @Jasonphilip8: 

In the year 1917, a Tamil Indian girl was born in a middle class family at Rangoon, Burma, where her father had gone for a living. He named her Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavathi. At a time when women were traditionally confined to the kitchen/illiterate, the middle class girl did MBBS from Rangoon Medical College.

When the Japanese invaded Burma, they briefly returned to their traditional home in Coimbatore. In 1949, she went to London to do an FRCP, then unimaginable for a female Indian doctor. She was selected to study further at Johns Hopkins University, US, where she trained under the legendary cardiologist Helen Taussig. Thereafter, she moved to Harvard University, where she trained under the Father of Cardiology, Paul Dudley White.

When a glorious cardiology career awaited her in the US, she was firm in returning to India and serving Indians. She joined Lady Hardinge Medical College in 1953 to become India's First Lady Cardiologist.

S.I.Padmavathi started India's first cathlab and exclusively cardiac clinic. Started India's first [diabetes] cardiology course. She founded the All India Heart Foundation in 1962 to serve the poor and needy....

She was the cardiologist and administrator of three great colleges at the same time.... She retired as director [of one of them] in 1978.

She set up the National Heart Institute (NIH) in 1981 at Delhi. At age 90, Padmavathi became a fellow of The European Society of Cardiology in 2007.

Till age 95 (year 2015), Padmavathi worked 12 hours a day, five days a week, to serve poor and needy Indians, with state-of-the-art cardiac care. She retired from active practice that year....

Both Padmavathi and her sister Janaki (a neurologist) remained single and started the Janaki-Padmavathi trust, pouring in their entire earnings to start a trust to provide poor people with money for life-saving heart surgeries.

After dedicating her entire life to serving the poor in the field of Cardiology, S.I.Padmavathi passed away in 2020, at age 103 from COVID.

Imagine the steely resolve, vision, brilliance and sheer determination of this iron lady to shatter the glass ceiling in achieving all these, serving poor Indians with quality cardiac care, and finally giving away all her wealth to her fellow citizens.

Most of the DMs I get are about: How do I get through [immigration red tape after medical school]? What salaries can I get? Quality of Life? Citizenship?

Here is an inspiring story of the first female cardiologist of India, who achieved so much by returning to her country. Tamilnadu and India should be mighty proud of their daughter, Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavathi!