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‘Open The Damn Schools’: Joe Scarborough Says Some Trump Critics Are Now The Ones ‘Not Following Science’

March 8, 2021 by dailycaller.com Leave a Comment

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough went after some critics of former President Donald Trump on Monday, saying that when it comes to the delay in reopening schools, they are now the ones “not following the science.”

In his broadcast of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough, along with Jonathan Lemire, a reporter for The Associated Press, questioned Dr. Ashish Jha on the science of reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic. They also discussed why “the same people who were criticizing” Trump “for not following science” are now also “not following science” when it comes to reopening schools. (RELATED: ‘It’s Not A Trick Question’: CNN Anchor Pushes Spokesperson For Kamala Harris To Stop Dodging On Teacher Vaccinations)

The discussion began with Jha answering a question from Lemire about the “realistic expectation” of going back to in-person learning and if parents should be prepared to send their children back to school for 5 days a week during the fall. He said that the science is “crystal clear” on the issue and that kids can “absolutely” go back safely five days a week. He added that it can be done “even sooner than that” by making some changes, including improving ventilation and vaccinations.

Scarborough then noted that some cities “continue to disappoint parents” by pushing reopening plans to later in the fall.

“It’s been very frustrating for the past month to hear the same people who were criticizing Donald Trump, I was one of them, for not following science, and now you have some of those same people when it has to do with opening schools not following science for political reasons,” he added.

Scarborough went on to say that there is “a hell of a lot of science” showing the impact not being in school has had on the mental health of children, and that not being in school “is a greater detriment” to their health than any risk from coronavirus.

“Yeah. So, you’re absolutely right. We’ve got very good science here that says we can keep schools safe … And all of that exists even before we had vaccines,” Jha responded. “If we don’t go back to full-time this fall, there is no reason to believe based on the data that we will go back to full-time in the fall of 2022 or fall of 2023. This virus is not going away. We are going to have to learn to live with it.”

“That is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable them dragging their feet as much as they are now. I know there’s a big race for mayor in New York City. I’m certainly hoping that most of the candidates for mayor have the very simple message: Open the damn schools. If they want to follow the science, that’s what their message will be in their campaign. Open the damn schools,” Scarborough concluded.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released updated guidance Feb. 12 saying that schools can safely reopen. They stated that they are recommending in-person instruction resumes as long as certain precautions are met and there is not a high rate of community spread. The guidance also said that teachers do not need to receive the coronavirus vaccine in order to reopen safely.

Teachers unions across the country have resisted returning to in-person learning, including one county in Virginia that decided to hire “classroom monitors” to watch children in place of teachers. The Chicago Teachers Union refused to go back to school unless teachers received the coronavirus vaccine.

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Bridging the Gap Between Science and Poor Reading in America

May 16, 2018 by www.psychologytoday.com Leave a Comment

For nearly two decades, there has been a huge gap between the science of reading and instructional practices in America’s classrooms. Reading scientists such as Mark Seidenberg, a researcher in cognitive psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, correctly attributes the problem to the failure of educators to pay attention to reading science (Seidenberg, 2017). With two decades of groundbreaking research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience and an explosion of new understandings about the architecture of the reading brain and how children learn to read, how is it that two-thirds of American fourth and eighth graders still read below grade level proficiency?

The answer harkens back to scientifically debunked practices indelibly planted more than three decades ago by the whole language movement. I was part of that movement, so I take the liberty to write about it! These same misunderstandings in reading education can also be traced back to the National Reading Panel report that came out during that same period when whole language dominated reading education. We now know what science says needs to be fixed.

The Missing Link

Mark Seidenberg touched on what’s missing in an interview entitled “The Ignored Science That Could Help Close the Achievement Gap” in The Atlantic (Glatter, 2016). He’s quoted as saying reading education is misdirected and ignores the science of how to teach children to read in the first place.

He’s right. In schools that are failing, children are often not being taught to read in kindergarten and first grade. In Seidenberg’s words, “That leaves all the stuff about how kids actually go from not reading to beginning reading to skilled reading out of the curriculum. So they [educators] emphasize ‘literacy’ and we [scientists] emphasize, I would say, the prerequisite: being able to read quickly and accurately with some basic skills under your belt.” As Seidenberg puts it, “They focus on a high-level notion of literacy and assume that just being able to pick up the mechanics is easy.”

What we’ve learned from brain science is that “picking up the mechanics” isn’t easy. Humans are born with circuitry already in place for picking up spoken language; no one is born with reading circuity. Reading has to be taught.

Getting children to reading proficiency by the end of first grade and supporting the reading brain’s continued development with ongoing foundational skills such as grade-by-grade growth in spelling is the missing link. With a few exceptions, all students should have the basic reading circuitry for proficient reading in place by the end of first grade—that is to say, they should independently read easy chapter books with comprehension and fluency. This is achievable under the care of teachers who have been well trained to teach reading even in high-poverty area schools.

Once children can read, they build their spoken language vocabularies and gain new concepts principally by reading and by exposure to an academic curriculum supported by good teaching. In addition to making sure that all kindergarten and first-grade teachers are trained to teach reading, how can science help us fix the few remaining whole language myths that continue to plague the teaching of reading?

Tracing the Missing Links in Reading Education to Whole Language Myths

Understanding where myths come from helps debunk them. Yet there is no need to denigrate whole language. Positive transformational changes in education advanced by whole language include the use of invented spelling, expectations for classrooms filled with good children’s literature, efforts to motivate children to read, use of thematic units, the writing process approach, more time for reading in school, plus integrating reading and writing across the curriculum. These contributions to reading education notwithstanding, too many of today’s educators hang on to five core principles of whole language that have been incontrovertibly debunked by science.

5 (Debunked) Whole Language Principles that Are Still in Use

Debunked Principle #1: Learning to read is as natural as learning to speak.

This principle, at the very core of whole language theory, has been debunked. The truth is that learning to read is not as natural as learning to speak. We all are born with built-in circuitry for speaking language but no one is born with built-in circuitry for reading. Brain science has proven that reading circuitry and spoken language circuity do not develop in the same way. We now know that speaking and reading share many processing domains and brain areas, but the actual brain development for speaking and reading is inherently different; the development of reading brain circuitry requires explicit instruction. Students do not simply “pick up mechanics” from reading and writing for their own purposes. For most kids, the foundational skills of reading have to be taught. Weighing in from a scientific perspective, renowned French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislis Dehaene did not mince words in his highly touted book, Reading In the Brain . He asserted that whole language “does not fit with the architecture of our visual brain” (2009, p. 195). Dehaene went on to say “Cognitive psychology directly refutes any notion of teaching via a “global” or “whole language method” (2009, p. 219).

Debunked Principle #2: Meaning always comes first in language (Goodman, 1986).

Some current classroom practices still reflect the whole language notion that meaning always comes first. As it turns out, word reading comes first in reading. A deep level of word knowledge—including having spelling representations in the brain—has to be taught. As you read this passage you can see the word dosseret in this sentence; you can read it in context as in “The dosseret is milky white.” But unless you have the spelling in the word form area of your brain, which maps the visual image of dosseret on this page to the same word in your spoken language system that you know the meaning of, you can’t comprehend dosseret . With “meaning comes first” theory, whole language gave meaning and syntax precedence in a three-cueing system; however, brain science flips that notion on its head. Given meaning, syntactic, or graphophonic cueing, it’s the graphophonic cue that ignites the reading brain, that is to say, it is word reading—ability to read and write a word correctly and automatically—that comes first. Meaning clues and syntax clues are secondary at best.

If you hear the word dosseret and understand it, if you say dosseret correctly, if you know dosseret’s meaning and, importantly, if you have the correct spelling representation of dosseret in memory , you will indeed comprehend it when you see it either isolated in print or in context. The fact that word reading comes first is supported in hundreds of published peer-reviewed studies that show skilled readers are able to rapidly recognize and read printed words, regardless of whether the words are presented in context or in isolation. When new or difficult words are encountered in context it is still the letter-sound associations that provide the first and most efficient route to reading, not the meaning or syntax from context.

Debunked Principle #3: Do not teach handwriting explicitly. Money for handwriting programs should instead be spent on children’s literature (Goodman, 1986).

Research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience supports teaching handwriting in elementary school. For example, a number of brain scanning studies demonstrated how handwriting aids preschoolers in learning their letters (James & Englehardt, 2012; Longcamp, Anron, & Velay, 2005). Learning to write in manuscript sets up  neural systems that underlie reading. Gimenez and others found higher handwriting quality correlating with gray matter volume and density signaling more efficient neural processing and higher skills and ability (Gimenez et al., 2014).

Debunked Principle #4: There is no pathology such as dyslexia (Goodman, 1986).

Dyslexia is certainly not a disease. But any idea advanced by whole language advocates and others who claim that there is no such thing as dyslexia have been debunked by science. Brain imaging irrefutably shows differences in processing in the reading circuity of children who are dyslexic versus normal readers. Some researchers even posit that dyslexia can be a gift with cognitive benefits. But in terms of learning to read and spell, there is no longer any doubt that this learning disability exists.

Debunked Principle #5: “There should be no special spelling curriculum or regular lesson sequences” (Goodman, Smith, Meredith, & Goodman, 1987, pp. 300-301).

Perhaps the most universally misunderstood aspect of the brain’s reading architecture is the importance of correct spelling representations in the word form area of the brain. We now know that the word form area where representations of spelling are stored is critical to proficient reading. It also plays an important role in detecting students at risk from dyslexia. Yet the destructive clarion call of whole language advocates three decades ago to not use spelling books or not teach spelling explicitly and systematically is still resounding in many school districts and schools. Here are three scientifically unsound practices with spelling instruction still in use today.

  1. No Spelling Instruction. As I travel across the country working with teachers in scores of districts or speaking at conferences, I hear the refrain over and over—“We don’t really teach spelling.” The weekly spelling unit of study has been replaced with test prep with no realization that the students would be better readers if we taught them to spell. “We don’t have time for spelling” is scientifically unsound; reading circuitry is optimized with automatic word reading for fluency, which greatly benefits from retrieving knowledge of correctly spelled words from the brain’s word form area. Compelling new research supports that teaching kids to spell in kindergarten and first grade, using techniques that support the use of invented spelling, not only increases end-of-first grade reading but also results in better conventional spellers (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017). A meta-analysis (Graham & Hebert, 2010), highlights connections between orthographic representations in the brain, spelling accuracy, and reading, all of which support the notion that spelling instruction is a way to improve reading in elementary school.
  2. Haphazard Spelling Instruction. Haphazard “hit or miss” spelling instruction is found in hundreds of schools across North America that have no plan for teaching spelling, no specific grade-by-grade curriculum, or random and disorderly instruction within a school. In some schools teachers choose their own words pulling them from the internet while other teachers rarely get around to teaching spelling at all. Spelling components of mammoth reading programs are always hit or miss. They present the wrong words for the grade level and no grade-by-grade curriculum. Beyond that, they subordinate weekly spelling lessons by mixing them in with too much other stuff to cover in a week. The spelling component may compete with each of the following for the teachers time: a vocabulary and oral language component, a phonemic awareness component, a phonics and fluency component, a sight words component, a text-based comprehension component, and a grammar and writing component. Remarkably, these components all focus on different words with no integration, leaving students floundering as spellers.
  3. Word Sorting Alone with Hypothesis Testing. Many teachers who continue to use commercial word sorting programs for spelling may not realize that they are using a 20-year-old whole language methodology that lacks support from today’s science. This spelling methodology exhibits many inadequacies such as no grade-by-grade curriculum. Moreover, it is scientifically problematic when word sorting is utilized as a single strategy system (Sharp, Sinatra & Reynolds, 2008) as opposed to a multi-strategy system that mixes up instructional strategies over time and distributes practice in ways that are supported by cognitive psychology (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013).

5 Science-Based Ways to Bridge the Gap

Fixing the gap between the science of reading and how we teach it is not rocket science—it’s based on research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Here are five ways to bridge the missing link.

  1. Assure that all kindergarten and first-grade teachers have been properly trained to teach beginning reading with an emphasis on the student’s ability to read quickly and accurately.
  2. Replace whole language practices with science-based practices such as an early focus on word reading.
  3. Teach handwriting (i.e., manuscript beginning in kindergarten and cursive beginning in grade two or three).
  4. Provide extra support for children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia.
  5. Teach spelling with research-based methodology in a grade-by-grade curriculum.

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From Riches to Rags and Back Again

January 3, 2019 by english.chosun.com Leave a Comment

January 03, 2019 13:26

Kim Yeong-ho went from riches to rags and back again within the space of a few years because he discovered how important it was to keep control of his firm.

Kim (36) set up Malang Studio in 2011 to develop smartphone apps just when the first wave crested, and made a huge success with the AlarmMon app.

Three years later he was able to sell off the company, but then things went downhill. “The number of people who worked for me shrank from 80 during my company’s heyday to just 11. I felt that it could go bankrupt at that rate,” he said.

In 2017 Kim bought back his start-up by borrowing W700 million from friends and began to overhaul its business model (US$1=W1,120). “I bought it back with loans from friends because the banks refused to lend me any money,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep due to the pressure of paying back the debt and found myself developing apps in the early hours of the morning.”

Kim became hooked on computers in elementary school and learned coding when he was in high school. He dropped out of Kyunghee University where he studied computer science in 2011 when he was 28 and set up Malang Studio with four friends. “I got bored with the things I was being taught in college and believed the answer could be found in real business experience,” he recalled.

His first year as an entrepreneur was littered with failures. He launched six apps that year, and every one of them failed. “That year, three of my partners left the start-up and found jobs in big conglomerates,” he said. “I felt this was my last chance and worked day and night to develop AlarmMon.”

The app is no more than a smart alarm clock that refuses to be turned off until users play a simple game to prevent them from going back to sleep. “I believed that even a small app could become successful if it’s appealing and achieved 20 million downloads in two years,” he said.

The company has also developed character-centered, gamified lifestyle apps, and its total downloads stand at 55 million now.

That success allowed him to sell the company to Yello Mobile, a mobile media company of more than 40 venture firms, in February 2014. In return he got more than W10 billion worth of unlisted stocks in Yello Mobile and kept his job at the helm. “I felt Yello Mobile could offer valuable synergy,” Kim said, but things did not turn out as planned.

“Without being the owner any more, it got difficult to make bold investments to develop new services as I wanted,” he explained. “I had no cash at my disposal since I received only stocks. I could not stand by and watch my company go bankrupt.”

That was when he decided to buy back his company. But the value of his stocks in Yello Mobile had plummeted when it ran into trouble.

“I started thinking hard about a new money-making model. I attracted ads to my apps and inserted the voices of celebrities such as boy band TVXQ to boost paying customers,” Kim said.

The TVXQ alarm service was developed in Japanese as well, and now 70 percent of the downloads originate from outside Korea. More than a million people use the app each month.

“Through the failures and successes I have tasted over the last eight years, I learned that I needed to pour my heart and soul into even the smallest app. My goal this year is to have everyone around the world wake up to the sounds of AlarmMon, and to take on the global market by developing new innovative apps,” Kim said.

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Goldman-backed broadband giant CityFibre to sell stake to new investor

March 8, 2021 by news.sky.com Leave a Comment

The owners of CityFibre Holdings, the telecoms infrastructure company, are to raise hundreds of millions of pounds from the sale of a stake to a new shareholder to aid their delivery of a £4bn investment programme.

Sky News has learnt that CityFibre has appointed the investment banks UBS and Rothschild to identify a third investor to join Goldman Sachs-backed West Street Infrastructure Fund, and Antin Infrastructure Fund.

The process, which is expected to take several months, will formally get under way this week, according to industry sources.

Insiders said CityFibre was likely to sell a substantial minority stake, which would enable it to receive a capital injection potentially worth many hundreds of millions of pounds.

In a statement on Monday, a CityFibre spokesman said: “We can confirm that we’re exploring a possible expansion of our shareholder base to support the acceleration of our build and possible participation in the BDUK [Building Digital UK] rural programme.”

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CityFibre, which last year bought the infrastructure arm of TalkTalk , has pledged to invest up to £4bn to deploy a full-fibre network that would reach up to eight million premises by 2025.

Such a programme would make the company the largest independent full-fibre platform in the country, and second only to Openreach, which operates at arm’s length from its parent company, BT Group.

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The company says that once completed, its network will serve approximately 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.

CityFibre is either building or mobilised in 67 towns and cities, with more than half a million homes now ready for services.

The company has agreements with Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen and a growing number of other internet services providers across the country to sell services over its networks.

A CityFibre insider said it was now “building at pace due to the favourable regulatory environment developed by [industry regulator] Ofcom for competitive infrastructure investment”.

The company is run by Greg Mesch, its chief executive, and chaired by Steve Holliday, the former National Grid boss.

Last June, it indicated that it would create 11,000 jobs over the next three years to deliver its expansion plan.

A string of smaller players, including Hyperoptic and Gigaclear, have also been set up in recent years to deliver full-fibre connections, prompting analysts to question how many of the new companies are likely to be financially successful.

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Wonder women

March 8, 2021 by bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com Leave a Comment

Bengaluru reported its first covid-19 case on March 8, 2020. For a year now, these ladies have been fighting an unprecedented battle. Pragna L Krupa reports

These doctors helped deliver 473 babies of covid-positive mothers. And they didn’t take a single day’s leave of absence for a whole year. How’s that for a doctor’s dedication?

An all-women team of doctors at the Vani Vilas hospital in Bengaluru, worked day and night, to make sure that covid did not cast its ugly shadow on the miracle of birth in 2020. And while the world worked from home, these women worked a whole year without taking a single day’s leave of absence and birthed 473 babies with covid-positive mothers. They kept in touch with their families through video calls and left their own children in the care of other family members.

They stayed away from their families due to the fear of transmitting covid and met them once a month after getting themselves tested

– Dr Geetha Shivamurthy, Medical Superintendent, Vani Vilas

Medical Superintendent, Dr. Geetha Shivamurthy said her team of 16 specialists, 20 paediatricians including two men and 10 nurses worked a whole year without taking a single day off. “They stayed away from their families due to the fear of transmitting covid and met them once in a month after getting themselves tested for covid. Not even a single doctor or staff who was working at the trauma care centre with covid-positive pregnant women, was infected. They also made sure none of the infants contracted the virus too.”

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The hospital received its first covid pregnancy case on May 8. “It was very unexpected and we had to quickly attend to it. Since that was the first case, there was a lot of stress. We followed all the protocols and the baby born was healthy and covid-free,” said Dr. Chaithra Ramachandra, assistant professor at BMCRI who attended to the case along with two other doctors.

While Dr Ramachandra was birthing babies, she had a breastfeeding baby at home who she did not see for three weeks. But despite spending over six months away from her family, she says her heart broke when the new mothers could not see their children after birth. “We had to separate them and show them photos of their new babies. Though protocols permit mothers and new born babies to be together and even be breastfed, the mothers were worried about passing on the infection and we were a little unsure too because these were the first cases,” says Dr Shivamurthy. Besides attending to covid positive pregnant women, the doctors also had to arrange for their primary contacts to be quarantined. Dr. Savitha C, HOD of OBG (Obstetrics & Gynecologist), said the demands of managing covid pregnancies impacted the doctors in ways they didn’t think they would experience.

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“The team would remain in their PPEs for six hours and after every case they would shower and get back to work. Since they didn’t have time to dry their hair, they cut their hair short. This was during the lockdown and no salons were open. So they sat in front of a mirror and gave themselves a haircut.”

Long hours in PPEs, fogging glasses and repeating covid protocols like spoilt records was draining, says Dr Anitha GS. “We had to raise our voices not because we were angry but to be heard over our masks,” she says.

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Dr. Sahana Devadas, professor at Paediatric Department said that of all the infants whose mothers were covid positive, only one child caught the infection due to the mother’s negligence. “But both of them recovered and were discharged after two weeks. There were no fatalities,” she said.

Between May and August, Vani Vilas was the only government hospital accepting covid and non-covid pregnant women. The team carried out 1635 non-covid normal deliveries, 984 C-sections along with 63 covid-positive normal deliveries and 153 C-sections.

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ASHA workers stepped out when no one did. But every worker who knocked on your door to enquire about your health has a story. Like Dakshayani.

Few people braved the pandemic and stepped out of their houses. The only ones who did it were the frontline workers. Among them, the ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers had one of the toughest roles – to go to homes of residents and ask if anyone was showing symptoms of covid, the number of people with co-morbidities, getting people to come and get tested. All of which drew scorn and rejection from people whom they were only trying to help on behalf of the health authorities.

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But every one of these women had a story. Like Dakshayani (57) from Seshadripuram, who visited over 600 houses and faced her share of abuses and rejection from people. “Some people shut the doors on our faces and told us not to enter their buildings. When there was community transmission, the stigma increased. There was fear among the public and they did not want to interact with us. We kept hearing stories about colleagues being attacked but we did not stop. We continued to visit homes, talk to people, raise awareness about the virus and discussed safety protocols.”

Dakshyani says she has gone to buildings which had covid positive cases, without any fear. “I would tell people to come and get tested in the testing camps we had set up but few would respond. I live alone because I lost all the members of my family. I don’t want anyone to be in the position I am in today. That’s why I’m very patient while advising people.”

I live alone because I lost all the members of my family. I don’t want anyone to be in the position I am in today. That’s why I’m very patient while advising people

– Dakshayani, 57, ASHA worker

Dakshyani says she lost her husband to liver disease in 2007, after which she joined as an ASHA worker the following year. A year later, her mother-in-law, unable to bear the shock of losing her son, slipped into depression and died. Soon, her father-in-law passed away too. There were more tragedies to come. “My elder son who was suffering from cancer died in 2016. Having lost all my family to health issues, I find deep fulfilment in being an ASHA worker. I was living with my younger son who came home one day after a fight with a girl he loved, and consumed poison. I saw him take it and rushed to save him. But I lost him too,” she says.

After visiting homes and helping to raise awareness on health, Dakshayani returns to an empty home. ‘I have no one waiting for me at home. But I hope I can prevent others from being in the situation that I am in.”

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Dr Lalitha Venkatesh and her husband kept their clinic open till as late as 1 am at the height of the pandemic to help people who had cough and cold but didn’t know whom to turn to

Dr Lalitha Venkatesh doesn’t just have patients waiting in their clinic (which she runs with her husband, Dr Venkatesh). The couple have admirers. And just as well because, for the last 40 years, this doctor couple has been treating patients for free or allowing them to pay however much they can afford.
During the pandemic, their clinic stayed open till 1.00 am catering to patients from mostly poor backgrounds.

Dr Lalitha Venkatesh

Dr Lalitha Venkatesh

“I started treating patients when I was 23 and had not completed medical school. There was a lot of demand for the doctors at that time and people were requesting me to start my practice. I ended up opening a clinic in my professor’s name – as Vishwas clinic in Seshadripuram, Platform road. I did not charge a fixed fee and some people would give me Rs 2 at that time. Dr. Venkatesh was my senior who used to guide me. One day I invited him as the chief guest to my clinic and I had no clue that my parents had arranged my wedding with him. Since we both believe in service to humanity, we would work late into the night.

No matter how late, we would always have dinner together. Previoulsy, I used to treat patients in my clinic and would visit Dr. Venkatesh’s clinic on alternate days. Due to covid, I have started seeing patients at Srinivasa clinic on all the days,” says the 65-year-old doc.

She also worked with the Health department to provide long-distance consultation during the pandemic. Dr. Lalitha who is a fertility specialist says she prescribes both alternative and allopathic medicines.

Her husband, Dr Venkatesh SR (70), and the force behind Srinivasa Clinic in Vyalikaval, completed his MBBS from BMC and was posted in a private institution in Tamil Nadu, during the early years of his practice. After a year, he returned to the city to start his clinic in Seshadripuram. Coming from a poor family, Venkatesh says he knew how difficult it was to have access to good medical care if you could not pay money. So he did not have a fixed fee for his patients. They could pay what they could afford, or not. “Since the time I started my clinic, I have been working 14 hour days. Sometimes I forget to have lunch and have it around 5.30-6 pm and start seeing patients almost immediately. I would keep my clinic open 24*7 but now I close on Sundays because my support staff need a day off,” he says.

Dr. Venkatesh in his clinic

Dr. Venkatesh in his clinic

Dr Venkatesh has a very different style of treating his patients. “I do not close the door when I treat a patient, nor when I’m giving an injection. There is nothing to hide.”

Between April and August, Dr Venkatesh says he saw increased footfalls. “A lot of these people were from poor families. Most people were afraid to go to hospitals and doctors during covid but they came to me.”

Dr Venkatesh was earlier working with Central Power Research Institute and Indian Institute of Science . Currently he is with Bharat Electronics Limited and Indian Telephone Industries Limited as an authorised medical practitioner. Speaking about the fear of covid he says, “I feel that I have already crossed my expiry date and I’m currently living my bonus time. If we start to rest, rust will set in. Pandemic or not, my service shall not stop.”

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