In 1939, a young medical graduate from India, Dr Jacob Chandy, who had big dreams came to eastern Saudi Arabia to work at a hospital at Aramco (Arabian American Company), later known as Saudi Aramco.
After a year, Dr Chandy decided to return home as he felt there wasn’t enough clinical work in Saudi Arabia to keep him busy.
He stopped in the neighbouring island state of Bahrain to book his ticket. He was, however, told that there would not be a ship returning to India for at least two weeks due to the disruptions in shipping schedules brought by the Second World War.
This prompted him to enquire if he could be of help for a few weeks at the American Mission Hospital (AMH) Bahrain, which was then run by Dr Paul Harrison.
That was a turning point in Dr Chandy’s career since he quickly cancelled his travel plans and instead stayed in AMH for three more years.
When he went back to India, he married and brought his new bride to Bahrain, where they welcomed their first child Mathew.
After a few years, Dr Jacob Chandy expressed his desire to return to his home country and work there.
But Mr Harrison, who had discovered the young doctor’s excellent surgical abilities, proposed that he travel to the US to receive formal training in neurosurgery, which was then an emerging field.
Mr Harrison also advised him that if he returned to India, he should consider joining the renowned Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, which is in today’s Tamil Nadu state. That college and hospital, like the AMH in Bahrain, were started by the missionary doctors of the Reformed Church in America.
In 1949, Dr Chandy proceeded to set up India’s first Neurological Sciences department at the CMC, which led him to be regarded as the country’s ‘father of modern neurosurgery’, after successfully leading the unit until 1970.
Mathew Chandy, like his pioneering father, went on to become a famous professor in the Department of Neurological Sciences at CMC Vellore, where he worked until 2001.
Jacob Chandy died on June 23, 2007, at the age of 97.
