Editorial biography · No. 17
Dr. Usha Kehar Luthra
Founder director of the ICMR's cytology institute, and the architect of cervical screening in India
- Full name
- Usha Kehar Luthra, Padma Shri
- Dates
- b. 1932
- Institution
- Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology, Indian Council of Medical Research
- Specialty
- Cytopathology · Preventive oncology · Cervical and oral cancer
- Training and role
- Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi · Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Agra · cytopathology training at Harvard and the International Academy of Cytology · PhD in cytopathology, Agra
Usha Kehar Luthra was Founder Director of the Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology under the Indian Council of Medical Research, and through it built the national screening programmes and cancer registries that gave India a preventive oncology worth the name.
Her work concentrated on the two cancers that matter most in the Indian epidemiological picture and least in the Western one: cervical and oral. She published more than 186 research papers, including on the role of human papillomavirus in cervical carcinogenesis, and worked with the World Health Organization, Tata Memorial Hospital, the Kidwai Memorial Institute, the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Health.
Born in 1932, she trained at Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi and Sarojini Naidu Medical College in Agra, then specialised in cytopathology at Harvard and through the International Academy of Cytology, taking a PhD in cytopathology at Agra.
The Government of India awarded her the Padma Shri for medicine in 1992. Cervical cancer is the clearest case in oncology of a disease that screening prevents rather than treats, and the institutional machinery for doing that in India was substantially her work.