Abdul Kalam: Rocket scientist who was a healer at heart

CHENNAI: We know APJ Abdul Kalam the teacher, the scientist, the President. He was also a healer.

When many questioned India's spending on rockets and missiles when it couldn't properly feed half its population, Kalam showed the caring side of rocket science by facilitating the development of at least two products that revolutionized healthcare: A stent that made heart surgeries affordable and calipers that made walking easier for polio-affected children.

Hyderabad-based cardiologist Dr B Soma Raju remembers that sometime in 1985 when Kalam, then the Defence Research and Development Laboratory director, visited Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) to see a colleague.

"Kalam was curious about everything, and he wanted to know why stents (small tubes used to keep arteries from clogging) were prohibitively costly," says Dr Raju. "When I explained that we are importing them, he suggested why don't we collaborate with DRDO to produce an indigenous stent."

DRDO provided the high-grade steel used in missiles, Dr Raju's team designed the stent and carried out tests. About five years later, they were ready with the Kalam-Raju stent that brought down the price from Rs 75,000 to Rs 10,000. "He was emotional," recollects Dr Raju. "He said for years he was developing missiles that kill people; now towards the fag-end of his career he was developing something that would save lives."

While working on Agni and Prithvi missiles, Kalam found use for carboncarbon composites to alleviate polioaffected people's pain. This led to the development of calipers that weigh as less as 400g instead of the earlier 4kg.