Thursday, July 30, 2020

A Visit at the Ladakh Center for Prevention


Dr. Tsering Norboo has been one of the founders of the Ladakh Center for Prevention after his retirement. He was born in 1944 and looks back to a respectable career as a Medical Officer in many villages of Ladakh especially in Nyoma and Medical Officer District Hospital, later Dr. Norboo was appointed as a Physician Specialist in SNM Hospital Leh [1].



A poster for a presentation
 

The Ladakh Institute of Prevention (LIP) promotes research of environmental, occupational, life style related and high altitude diseases.; the main objectives are:
     1. To promote and encourage changes to create clean and healthy home and work environment
     2. To lead the population in practicing “healthy lifestyle”
     3. To mitigate high altitude related health problems
     4. To establish state of the art laboratories to analyse and monitor air, water and noise pollution
     5. To conduct epidemiological studies to control non-communicable diseases including cancer.



Activities of the Ladakh Center for Prevention

The Institute also plans the issue of maternity and infant logs plus the accompanying visits and examinations. „We are planning a mother and child examination system through well designed mother and child health care hand book whereby the health of the mother throughout pregnancy and 9 months post pregnancy and health of the child from 0-6 years will be recorded, monitored and treasured.“ I've seen prototypes of these booklets.

Another example is the reduction of smoking. Dr. Norboo played aleading role in reducing the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Ladakhi men from 42% in 1988 to 8% in 2010. Or educating the population for prevention of HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The LIP screened about 5000 subjects for Hepatitis B and motivated those with negative reports for vaccination.



In 2019 Dr. Tsering Norboo has been presented Padma Shri Award by the President of India. Padma Shri Award is India's fourth highest civilian honors [2]. Congratulations!


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