R.C. Sharma
Dr. Neelam Kler has been conferred Padma Bushan this year. She is the daughter of soil and has rendered distinguished services in her field and is renowned internationally. She is daughter of C.L. Seghal Gandhi Nagar Jammu and renders selfish service to the patients from the State. She is also a member of high power committee under Chairman of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for infant mortality. Her husband Dr T.S. Kler Executive Director got Padma Vibushan award in the year 2011. A unique couple in deed whose services has been recognised.
Prof Neelam Kler is an eminent and a distinguished neonatologist, well known in the country and abroad. She was born at Jammu and did her post graduation at prestigious Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh. She trained in Neonatology under Prof Knudson of Copenhagen, Denmark, and joined Sir Ganga ram hospital New Delhi in the year 1988 as a Neonatologist. At that time new born care in India was just emerging and was not a separate subspecialty, concepts of neonatal ventilation and neonatal intensive care was still in primitive stage. Over last 25 years she has developed a state of art department of neonatology, one of the largest in the country, providing care at par with best in the world. Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Neonatal intensive care unit is a centre of excellence equipped with latest modes of ventilation including High Frequency ventilation, facilities for delivering Nitric Oxide, bed side cereberal function monitoring. As a result of her continuous efforts to improve infrastructure and provide quality care through evidence based medicine, the survival of extremely tiny preterm babies (<1000gms)has increased to 90%, and infection rates are down to 9.8per 1000 admissions. She under stood importance of safe and stable transport of sick neonate for intact survival and has been pioneer in developing excellent “Neonatal emergency Transport program” for transfer of extremely sick babies. Department has done largest number of land and air transport of sick neonates and are in process of developing 2 year accreditation program in emergency Pediatrics / Neonatal transport. Dr. Kler has been very active with Academic and research developments in Neonatology, both at National and International level. She has been first to start 3 years post doctoral Program in Neonatology under National board of Examinations (NBE).
She worked in close tandem with National Neonatology Forum as sesive goals to attain optimum neonatal health in the country by promoting science of Neonatology, making recommendations for neonatal care, defining standards of care and promoting education. She worked with other stake holders (UNICEF, WHO. NIPI etc) on various National health programmes on Maternal and Newborn health. Her involvement in such programmes was right from their conception to implemen tation and developing teaching aids for training of various neonatal health care providers at different levels. She played a pioneer role in establishment of Neonatal units across the country. She is a member of various national neonatal health expert groups. To name a few, she is on panel of ‘New born and child health strategy Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (2012-2015)’; ‘Janani Suraksha Yojna’, ‘National Program on Facility based care of Sick new born at Referral facility’.
She is on board of various scholar exchange programs of eminent International universities like “Stanford -International health and society Initiative”, a maternal child health well being mentorship program for interdisciplinary scholarship at Stanford University. She is also working on affordable technology for newborn in developing countries. One such example is D-Rev (Designs- Revolution, a NGO formed by Stanford students) which has developed low cost equipment for management of jaundice for newborn in rural India. Dr Kler works on various Global committees eg WHO Expert on prevention of birth defects in South East Asia, Master trainer for Helping Baby’s Breath (American academy of Pediatrics), Member of global Neonatal Nutrition consensus group in developing international guide lines on “Feeding the preterm infants”.
Dr. Kler is working with Access (Indian School of Business, Hyderabad) on a neonatal collabration based on Institute of health care improvement (Massachusetts) model in decreasing hospital acquired infections in 6 national NICU’s.It is the first multi-institutional quality initiative in our country for improving neonatal outcomes.
She has published several scientific papers in National and International Journals. She has been editor of Journal of Neonatology 2002-2006, member editorial board of Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research and reviewer for Indian Journal of Medical Research. She is principal investigator of various ongoing multinational, multicentric Research projects in collaboration of National and International research bodies like ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research), NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development USA), Public Health Foundation of India(PHFI), London school of Hygiene and Tropical medicine(UK), Institute of health Improvement(IHI,USA). It is very correct to say that she has been part of various mile stones achieved in Newborn health in India and has emerged as a strong Global leader in her field.
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