J N Pande

Jitendra Nath Pande was a lung specialist and head of the department of medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, widely seen as the founder of India’s respiratory and critical care medicine. He was named for the Padma Shri posthumously in 2021 in the field of medicine, from Delhi ^[1].

A life at AIIMS

Pande was born on 14 June 1941 in Shikohabad, Uttar Pradesh, and came to Delhi at 17 to study medicine at AIIMS ^[2]. He graduated first in his class in 1962 and took his MD there in 1966 ^[2]. He spent his whole career at the institute, becoming one of its youngest professors of medicine at 48, and led the department from 1993 until he retired in 2003 ^[2]. Afterwards he worked as a senior consultant at the Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research in Delhi for the rest of his life ^[2].

He trained at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London in 1975, learned bronchoscopy at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1979, and studied epidemiology at the University of North Carolina in 1988–89 ^[2].

Firsts

Returning from Stockholm, he was the first to bring bronchoscopy into practice in India ^[2]. As head of department he set up the country’s first medical intensive care unit at AIIMS ^[2].

Teacher and researcher

Generations of students and residents remembered his evening ward rounds and his gift for diagnosis, and his lectures drew crowds ^[2]. His research covered high-altitude physiology, lung mechanics, exercise physiology, tuberculosis and lung disease ^[2]. The Supreme Court cited his study on the effects of air pollution on the heart and lungs in its 1998 ruling that public transport switch to CNG ^[2].

He edited the textbook Respiratory Medicine in the Tropics for Oxford University Press, edited medical journals, advised the Indian Council of Medical Research and took part in the investigation of the Bhopal gas disaster ^[2]. The National Academy of Medical Sciences made him an emeritus professor ^[2].