Top Virologist On Yoga's Role In Preventing Lifestyle Diseases

India has, in the past, tended to borrow solutions from the West and is finally being able to frame its own questions about health and seek to answer them - which was evident during the Covid pandemic - Dr Gagandeep Kang, one of India's top virologists, has said. 

Dr Kang, who was honoured with the 'Health Leader Of The Year' award at the NDTV Indian Of The Year awards on Friday also spoke about the impact of long Covid and the importance of yoga in tackling the rise of lifestyle diseases. 

Speaking after receiving the award, Dr Kang said, "In India, we tend to borrow our solutions from the West and what we have been trying to do over the past few decades is for us to frame our own questions about health in India and seek to answer them. I am really excited about the fact that we are finally doing that; we saw it during Covid, but I hope that this is a revolution that will continue because we do need to rely on ourselves to be able to solve our problems," she said.

Dr Kang said there are two areas that she would like to see India focus on, including solving tuberculosis (TB) in the country. She said TB is the biggest infectious disease killer in the world and Covid had beaten it for a year, but it is now back. The second area, she said, is nutrition - both under- and over-nutrition. 

The virologist also spoke about integrating traditional Indian systems of medicine and knowledge, which have not been fully integrated into healthcare, prompting a question on whether she sees the dissonance between traditional and modern medicine reducing. 

"I think with the increase of westernised lifestyles, we are seeing more lifestyle diseases and if you look at our traditional systems of medicine, they are holistic in the advice that they offer, in terms of diet, exercise and what people need to be doing. Yoga is union," she said. 

Dr Kang said she chose research as her field because there is nothing more exciting than the opportunity to ask your own questions and then figure out the answers. 

'Lot Of Work To Do'

On Covid, its mutations and long Covid, which is still affecting many, she said, "I think we are learning more about long Covid and the consequences of viral infections. We clubbed it all as one syndrome and what we are learning today is that it actually has multiple manifestations that can last long term. So, there is a lot of work for us to do to understand the consequences of both single and multiple infections, which is the situation we are dealing with today."

Asked whether she had a message for young girls who have an interest in science, the virologist said, "Economic independence really matters and if you can achieve that doing something that you enjoy, you are doing the right thing for yourself and your family."