Dr Prabhu’s step-by-step ascent at KMC

MANGALORE: He is truly the headmaster of the school that he studied in. The journey of Kasturba Medical College (KMC) alumnus Dr M Venkataraya Prabhu came full circle as he took over as its dean on December 1. It is the very institution that taught him the ropes of medicine when he joined there for MBBS in 1976.
Dr Prabhu, incidentally, is part of the vintage batch which studied its first year MBBS at KMC (Manipal) and the remaining three years at KMC (Mangalore).
Dr Sripathi Rao, his counterpart at KMC (Manipal) is a KMC alumnus, albeit at the PG level. Dr Prabhu, on the other hand, did his UG and PG at KMC (Mangalore), joined there as a lecturer in 1985, and went on to become a professor and associate dean in 2001.
In a freewheeling chat with TOI, Dr Prabhu said his elevation to the post is recognition by Manipal University of the hard work put in by him over the years. Dr Prabhu was associate dean at KMC (Mangalore) for the past 10 years and his climb to the top has been a measured one.
Recalling the influence that his teachers K R Shetty, A V Shetty, K P Ganeshan, I G Bhat, R L Kamath, and M P Pai had on him at various stages in his career, Dr Prabhu said it is they who went beyond the call of duty. Thanks to these visionaries, the city in the early 1960s boasted of super-specialty departments at District Wenlock Hospital. “It is their vision that helped students like me get the best-ever possible hands on training,” he recalls.
A decision by the management of KMC to go in for its own teaching hospitals at Attavar in 1982 and Dr B R Ambedkar Circle in 1996 in addition to the two government hospitals – Wenlock and Lady Goschen that KMC managed -- Dr Prabhu said ensured that students studying here had the healthy mix of working in diverse situations. “This has gone a long way in increasing the quality of healthcare in all these hospitals over the years,” he says.
As a teacher, he recalls the success of one his ‘ordinary student’ Annapoorna Prabhu. A girl from Puttur, Dr Annapoorna is featured in ‘The Guinness Book of World Records’ for performing the maximum number of angioplasties at Mount Sinai Hospital (New York).
Aiming to take KMC (Mangalore) in to the league of top 10 best medical colleges in India, Dr Prabhu says his rise to the top has seen him become part of many a milestone of the university.