Dr Sandeep Jaipurkar
Dr Sandeep Jaipurkar, 53, a radiologist, spends 12 hours a day in the imaging room, scanning patients’ CT scans, MRI, X-rays looking for little, hidden clues to their disease.
And if he gets some free time, he draws cartoons on myriad themes relating to medical profession on his prescription pads. When a patient enters, he slips the paper into the drawer in his table. “It is an old habit; I was a medical student when I started drawing cartoons. In fact, in the 1980s when I was studying at Government Medical College, Nagpur, I used to make cartoons for Nagpur Times, a daily paper,” he says.
But at that time, most of his cartoons had nothing to do with medicine. A couple of years back, he resumed his hobby, but now his drawings convey a message to his fellow doctors or his patients.
He feels that the little piece of information that his funny cartoons carry have better recall value than any other publicity material. Last year, during the breast cancer awareness month, when a lot of institutions and organizations were offering free or discounted screening tests to people, he came up with an innovative idea—he brought out a unique comic book with all the necessary information about the breast cancer.
The story starts with a kitty party where one woman tells her friends that she has an appointment with a doctor and has to go for a breast cancer screening. She asks her friends to join her. “ During the screening, one of the friends gets diagnosed with an early stage breast cancer and is successfully treated,” he says.
The 30-page comic book provides detailed knowledge about the importance of breast cancer screening, treatment and management of the disease in the form of a story. His gifts his self- published book to all his patients.
He is now working on a similar book on diabetes. “A book on strokes and ergonomics are also in the pipeline,” he quips.