K.S. Sanjivi

Krishnaswami Srinivas Sanjivi (1903–1994) was a Madras physician and Gandhian who gave up a senior government medical career to build a hospital run on the principle that the poor should not pay for care. Born at Pudukkottai, he graduated in medicine from Madras Medical College in 1927 and took his MD there in 1932. In state service he rose to Director of Tuberculosis in the Madras Medical Service, taught medicine at Stanley Medical College and Madras Medical College, and was the first physician at the Government General Hospital, Madras.

When he was passed over for the post of Director of Medical Services he took voluntary retirement, and in 1958 founded Voluntary Health Services as a non-profit body to provide affordable medical care to poor and middle-income families. He declined a chair in medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi and chose not to enter private practice, giving his time entirely to the new institution. Support came from his students and from public figures including Kasturi Srinivasan, T. R. Venkatarama Sastri, M. Bhaktavatsalam and M. A. Chidambaram. Work on the hospital building began in 1961 with the foundation stone laid by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and the first inpatient was admitted about two years later. The hospital grew into a 405-bed referral institution that still treats roughly seventy per cent of its patients free, including food and medicines.

Sanjivi is also credited with helping shape primary healthcare practice in India. During his government service he had set up a number of small health centres in rural areas, and he carried the model into Voluntary Health Services, which runs fourteen mini health centres in villages and small towns covering about 100,000 people and handling immunisation, maternity care, family welfare, sanitation, school health checks and vital registration. He also devised a contributory medical aid plan, an early form of health insurance for low- and middle-income families. In his later years he turned to HIV/AIDS work; in 1965 the institution he built was selected by the United States Agency for International Development as the nodal agency for the AIDS Prevention and Control project in Tamil Nadu.

He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1971 and the Padma Bhushan in 1976. He died in October 1994, aged 91. Voluntary Health Services has held an annual K. S. Sanjivi Endowment Lecture since 1995, delivered by figures including Aruna Roy, Vishwa Mohan Katoch and Ravi Narayan, and its auditorium carries his name.[2]