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Shiban Ganju

Shiban Ganju

Shiban is the chairman of a biotechnology company in India and a practicing gastroenterologist in the USA. He travels between these two spaces frequently but lives in them simultaneously. He has been a passionate theater worker, reluctant army officer, ambitious entrepreneur, successful CEO and an active NGO volunteer. Still, he is does not know what he wants to be when he grows up; but he wants his epitaph to be "He tried." Email: [email protected]

‘Save a Mother’ – Ten Years Later: What’s New?

Posted on Monday, Apr 23, 2018 12:05AMThursday, March 14, 2019 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju An update and gratitude is overdue to the readers and editors of 3QD who supported the NGO, ‘Save a Mother’ in its infancy. Years have passed. So, what’s new? Nothing seems to have changed in ten years since I visited this village – a dusty swathe of land, home to over eleven…

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Save a Mother

Posted on Monday, Mar 1, 2010 12:05AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju Early in the morning, my cell phone rang. I looked at the screen. It was a call from India; Anoop was on the other end. “This training will not do well. The women don’t seem enthusiastic.” He was in Uttar Pradesh, in a small village – Mijwan, the birth place of progressive…

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BIL has ED

Posted on Monday, Jan 4, 2010 12:09AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju I wish you all a happy new year and hope it starts on a lighter note; mine did. After a year of worrying about the health reform – that wasn’t, and economic meltdown – that was, a phone call from brother in law (BIL) made me ruminate about sexually dysfunctional people. They…

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Health Care Reform

Posted on Monday, Nov 9, 2009 12:13AMSunday, January 20, 2019 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju Health care begets health; the two are inseparable. Experience of developed countries shows that disease is recession proof while national income is not; demand grows inexorably while funding shrinks. When the resources lag to fulfill the minimum need, health becomes a mere dream. People of the world are unhappy with their national…

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Climate Change: We are in it together

Posted on Monday, Sep 14, 2009 12:25AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju We had assembled outside Lucknow to train ‘master trainers’. They had travelled from their villages, one to two hundred miles away, for a six day education in health care. Women outnumbered men in this group of thirty five. We believed, on their return, they would become health trainers in their native villages.…

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Prevention and the Cost of Health Care

Posted on Monday, May 25, 2009 5:01AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju One formula to cut the cost of health care: stay healthy until you die. Unfortunately for the payers of health care, disease intervenes between health and death. That costs money. And the more chronic the disease, the more money it gobbles up. Prevention and management of chronic disease are two important planks…

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LUI: Living Under the Influence

Posted on Monday, Mar 2, 2009 12:09AMSunday, January 20, 2019 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju We spent approximately $115.9 billion to buy alcohol in the USA in 2003 and spent billons more to treat its ravaging effects on our bodies. We are not alone. All people – Asian, European, American, and African – enjoy and suffer almost equally. No society is exempt; rich spend discretionary income while…

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Then Spoke the Thunder

Posted on Monday, Jan 5, 2009 12:30AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju Jack arrived in the hospital a few minutes after midnight. Next morning he was dead. Death visits a hospital in sobs, shrieks or stoic silence. It stumbles with stroke, burns with feverish sepsis, crashes in with a fractured torso, stuns a teenager with drug overdose, rams the chest with a heart attack,…

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BIL goes jogging

Posted on Monday, Dec 8, 2008 12:03AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

The highway of life displays warning axioms, which my brother in law (BIL) missed or just ignored. BIL, the unemployed-but-rich hedge fund manager, laments that he should have never studied finance, which initiated him to a life of greed and excess. He has just realized the truth in the fourth axiom of life: whatever you…

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Sarah Palin vs. The Fruit Fly

Posted on Monday, Nov 10, 2008 4:47PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

By Shiban Ganju Her mouth stretched with a condescending smile and her face reflected scorn. “You’ve heard about some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research…

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The Stethoscope and the Art of Medicine

Posted on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 5:38AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

Human innards are noisy: thud of heart valves, hiss of lungs, swish of blood flow, gurgle of intestines; and in disease: the thud muffles into murmur, hiss becomes crackle, swish sharpens to whistle and gurgle falls silent. For about two centuries, medical practitioners have evolved an art to discern these sounds with the help of…

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The Smells of Delhi

Posted on Monday, Sep 15, 2008 2:37AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

My brother in law (BIL) has ‘flu’: his dry throat and raspy cough bother him, but it his mucus laden stuffy nose that is the cause of his misery. He cannot smell and food has lost its flavor. If I were sentimental about food like BIL, I would sympathize; instead, I congratulate him, “Celebrate your…

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McCain and the Myth of the Medical Market

Posted on Monday, Jul 21, 2008 1:13PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

The US annual health care expenditure is riding a nonstop escalator. The current spending of over two trillion dollars will reach an unsustainable four trillion dollars or 20% of the GDP in 2017. Yet, an estimated 47 million Americans had no insurance for a whole year in 2006 and 89.5 million people under the age…

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BIL snores. Is he Pickwickian?

Posted on Monday, Apr 28, 2008 6:47AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

My brother in law (BIL) has joined the jobless – the vortex of sub-prime debacle has sunk the hedge fund he managed. But please don’t pity him: he is without a job but not without money. Unlike a side-street plebeian, this Wall Street prince stays rich even when unemployed. BIL – though ailing from derivatives…

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The Uninsured Patient

Posted on Monday, Mar 3, 2008 4:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

Shiban Ganju My pager beeped while I was standing in line in Starbucks. I checked the message – it was the telephone number of the ICU. I ordered my coffee and stepped aside to call. The nurse informed me, that I was asked to consult on a 33-year-old patient who had been admitted the night…

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Detox Body or Mind?

Posted on Monday, Feb 4, 2008 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju Dedicated to Jenny Mah, a 3QD reader, who blogged the following comment in my earlier post: “Would you consider doing one on other forms of “detox” such as “cleansing” diets and, the latest to hit my city – ionic footbaths!” —————————————– I travel for my work; I fly forward across continents and…

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Teaser Appetizer: Super Bugs

Posted on Monday, Dec 10, 2007 12:09AMSunday, January 20, 2019 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju Super bugs excel in defying therapy just like super star Britney. Though antibiotic resistant bugs or ‘super bugs’ thrived before the super stars, yet unlike them they lay unnoticed – that is, till recently. Microbes inhabited this planet long before humans. They were already experts in the game of ‘natural selection’ –…

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TEASER APPETISER: BIL AND HIS FAT CELLS

Posted on Monday, Sep 17, 2007 10:24AMSunday, January 20, 2019 by Shiban Ganju

by Shiban Ganju This world has two kinds of people: those who flip from one diet to the other without shedding a pound and those who reach the same goal without trying. I met both of them on last Sunday: my brother in law (BIL), the non-dieting-hedge-fund-manager and his friend, a serial-dieter-hedge-fund-lawyer (HFL). Yes, she…

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Does BIL Need Sugar?

Posted on Monday, Aug 20, 2007 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

My brother in law (BIL) needs just enough sugar to sweeten his three cups of coffee a day. Beyond that he can do away with sugar. But BIL, the hedge fund manager, has always chewed candy to relieve the woes of wealth. And lately, with gyrating Wall Street and the stress of possibly losing it…

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Teaser Appetizer: Sally Does Yoga

Posted on Monday, Jul 30, 2007 12:01AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by Shiban Ganju

I buttoned my white coat, adjusted the stethoscope around my neck, opened the door and entered the examination room. I hadn’t seen Sally for a few years. On this day, what I remembered of her was: a high-strung person with recalcitrant belly pains, which I had not been able to palliate, in spite of all…

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