After his car accident Tuesday, 15-time Major League Champion Tiger Woods was transported to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he underwent surgery for multiple injuries by a team of doctors under the command of Dr. Anish Mahajan. , the 46-year-old doctor at the hospital. -old medical director who has his roots in Jalgaon in Maharashtra.
“I have followed Tiger Woods’ career, watching him on television. I think the way he won the 2019 Masters was very inspiring and speaks to his willpower to come back after so many injuries, which showed how strong he is as an individual, ”said Dr. Mahajan, who is also the interim CEO. 570- hospital bed, he told The Indian Express.
Woods was involved in an accident on Hawthorne Boulevard in Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles County. Dr. Mahajan’s Hospital is one of five Level 1 trauma centers in the county, providing specialty surgeons, emergency room physicians, and anesthesiologists, often for victims of auto accidents, industrial accidents, and gunshot wounds. fire or stabbing.
Later, Woods was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he received successful “follow-up procedures.”
“The first thing is to make sure (when patients like Woods are brought in) that their vital systems are working well and (to) access what kind of injuries there are. If there is a brain injury, the neurosurgeons come quickly, if there are internal injuries, the general trauma surgeon should go, and if there are bone injuries, specialists in orthopedic trauma should come, ”said Dr. Mahajan, who oversees the 12 clinical chairs at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, he said.
Dr. Mahajan is the grandson of the late Yadav Shivram Mahajan, who was a congressional deputy for five terms in Lok Sabha, once from Buldhana and four times from Jalgaon. His family moved to the United States in the 1970s, where Dr. Mahajan’s father, Prakash Mahajan, joined the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, to obtain a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Dr. Mahajan initially earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy before earning his medical doctorate from Brown University. He completed his master’s in international health from the Harvard School of Public Health and his master’s in health services from UCLA.
He visited India frequently, spending time with his in-laws grandfather; this, Dr. Mahajan said, was one of the reasons he opted for studies in public policy before moving on to study medicine.
“When I was a child, when I was visiting my grandfather in Jalgaon, I would see children from neighboring villages approaching him and he would spend time teaching them in the midst of his busy schedule, talking to their parents and filling out their forms. His desire to work for the poor inspired me to dedicate my career to the medical profession. I did my graduation in public policy because I believe that improving the health of the population requires changes at the policy level, and not only in the clinical aspect. My interest was to improve health care for the poor and indigent, ”he said.
Dr. Mahajan, a clinical researcher for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at Brown University, was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 to serve as a member of the White House in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In this role, he served as special advisor during the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature healthcare initiative.
“I believe that health care is a right if you are a human being. In the US, medical care depends on who you are, what your immigration status is, or your social status. And that means you can have access to different levels of health care. I think people should have the same access to it. I see the same kinds of challenges in India, where poor and destitute people have a different kind of health care. The focus must be on giving everyone access to good health, regardless of who they are, ”said Dr. Mahajan.
Los Angeles saw an increase in Covid-19 cases in December-January with more than 8,000 patients, immediately after a million cases before with 20,000 deaths.
“In the beginning, there was a lot of stress and anxiety. When the second and third waves arrived, the challenge was to address the high number of cases and the fatigue factor. The staff also had to deal with human sadness, ”said Dr. Mahajan, who is also associate dean of the David Jeffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Over the course of a long and terrible year, his hospital had to seek the help of mental health specialists, he said. “Most of the doctors and nurses had to take extra shifts. Many of the staff members also fell ill with Covid-19 while at home… We had sessions with psychologists. My role was to support everyone every day, be it Christmas or New Years, to bring them food on such special occasions in the dark environment. When I had some free time, I read the new novel Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh… It relaxed my mind, ”said Dr. Mahajan.
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.