Dr. Georgi Abraham

Abraham trained under Dimitrios G. Oreopoulos at Toronto Western Hospital in Canada, and gives that period as the source of his approach to the care of kidney patients. He gave up his career in Canada and moved to Chennai to work with poor patients with kidney disease, and pioneered continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in India.

After India's transplantation law came into force in 1994, Abraham and colleagues carried out the country's first multi-organ deceased donor transplantation, in Chennai in 1995. His team also reported the first successful kidney transplantation from brain-dead victims of snakebite, published in the journal Transplantation in 1997.

He has been professor and consultant at MGM Healthcare, Chennai, and previously professor at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai, and the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, and is an adviser to the department of nephrology at the Madras Medical Mission. He was founder-president of the Peritoneal Dialysis Society of India, a governing council member of the International Society of Nephrology, a founding executive member of World Kidney Day, and editor-in-chief of the Indian Journal of Peritoneal Dialysis. He has served as an international adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, London.

Abraham met Sarojini Kumaraswami, a patient on peritoneal dialysis, and her daughter-in-law Latha Kumaraswami; together with a group of philanthropists who became the foundation's trustees they established the Tamilnad Kidney Research Foundation in 1993.

The first subsidised dialysis units opened in November 1994 at Tamilnad Hospitals and Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute. Further units followed, including the Rekha Memorial unit in 1999, the Renny Abraham Ambattur Rotary unit in 2006 and a unit in Madurai later the same year. The Tamil actor Suriya is the foundation's goodwill ambassador.

Abraham received a vocational excellence award from the Rotary Club of Madras in 1997 and the International Distinguished Medal in Nephrology from the American Kidney Foundation in 2003. In March 2011 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by FICCI, the Tamil Nadu government's health ministry and The Times of India for his charitable work through TANKER.

He received the Best Doctor Award from Tamil Nadu Dr M.G.R. Medical University in 2012, and in October 2012 became the first recipient of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis's Dimitrios G. Oreopoulos Award for lifetime contributions to peritoneal dialysis. Other honours include the Dr K. V. Thiruvengadam Award for Health Care in 2013, the Rama Varma Award in 2013, recognition by the Tamil Nadu Medical Council in 2014, the International Society of Nephrology's Roscoe Robinson Award for excellence in education in nephrology and medicine in March 2015, the Sri Shanmukhananda Ruby Jubilee Healthcare Award in 2015, and the Omnicuris CME Excellence Dronacharya Award for nephrology education in 2021.[2][3][4][5]