Narendra Prasad Misra

Narendra Prasad Misra was a physician and teacher who served as dean, head of medicine and professor at Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal. He was named for the Padma Shri posthumously in 2022 in the field of medicine, from Madhya Pradesh ^[1].

Training at home and abroad

Misra was born on 10 October 1932 ^[2]. He topped his university in the MBBS examination, passed the MRCP in 1967 and became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1973, at 39 ^[2]. As a Commonwealth scholar he trained at the University of London’s Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, and he later trained at the National Institutes of Health in the United States and worked there as a senior visiting professor designated by the World Health Organization ^[2].

The gas disaster

During the Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984, he mobilised doctors, staff and supplies on a huge scale ^[2]. Medicines were distributed to more than 1,73,000 people, and more than 10,700 patients were admitted to a hospital with only 800 beds ^[2]. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 1985 described the effort as heroic ^[2].

After retiring as dean he was chief investigator for the Indian Council of Medical Research project on the disaster, and presented evidence on it in court in New York ^[2].

Writer and teacher

He published more than 200 research papers, wrote Progress in Cardiology, and was a section editor of the Association of Physicians of India’s textbook of medicine ^[2]. He was remembered as a gifted teacher with a sharp diagnostic eye ^[2].