[Intl-tobacco] Obituary: Dr Sharad G Vaidya (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Obituary: Dr Sharad G Vaidya
Tob Control 2001;10:77 ( Spring )
by PRAKASH C GUPTA / Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India,
pcgupta@tifr.res.in
INDIA;
Source: Tobacco Control, Wednesday, 2/28/01


Throughout India, we often said, we have only one professional person
devoting 100% of the time to tobacco controlDr Sharad G Vaidya from Goa.
Alas Dr Vaidya is no more. He died on 19 October 2000 at Bombay Airport on
his way from the UK to Goa.

Dr Vaidya was a surgeon specialising in cancer surgery, a profession
perhaps natural for him because his surname means "physician" and because
he came from a long line of family physicians. From early in his career,
Dr Vaidya became more interested in cancer prevention than in surgery. He
founded the Goa Cancer Society, the second such society in India. He took
up tobacco education as a part of cancer prevention activities. The more
he delved into the topic of tobacco, the more passionate he became about
it. He founded the National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication and was
its president.

He acquired a wide ranging knowledge of the tobacco industry, tobacco
economics and even tobacco agriculture, and a deep understanding of the
ways of the tobacco industry. He studied writings about the tobacco
companies and books written by their executives. He would often come up
with startling nuggets such as his discovery that the chairman of the
Imperial Tobacco Company had played an important role in drafting the
excise tax laws of British India, for which he was profusely thanked and
rewarded by the government. Quite interesting when one considers that the
same tobacco company (now ITC), the largest in India, does not let anyone
forget for a moment that it is the largest contributor to excise tax in
India.

Dr Vaidya had well understood the power of economics over health. He often
said that one could understand tobacco much more by reading financial
newspapers. He found out, for instance, that a large part of investment in
tobacco companies in India and financial loans to them were from public
sector undertakings.

Dr Vaidya worked on several scientific projects. Through a large
non-randomised trial, he showed that educating children about tobacco
produces a significant change in the tobacco use behaviour of the
community.

His work on the effect of the sponsorship of sports events by tobacco
companies on the perception, attitudes, and smoking behaviour of children
was the first of its kind here and is widely quoted.

Dr Vaidya believed in developing personal contacts. If he heard about
someone interested or contributing positively to tobacco control, he would
track that person down, telephone him, and develop a personal rapport. He
was a good communicator and powerful public speaker. His friends sometimes
chided him that he had become rather emotional while speaking. His
standard response was "how can anyone NOT get emotional while speaking
about tobacco?"

Dr Vaidya developed an excellent rapport with the media. He was a prolific
writer of letters to newspapers and was perhaps the person most often
interviewed in India on the topic of tobacco. He was instrumental in
getting The Goa Prohibition of Smoking and Spitting Act 1997 (Goa Act 5 of
1999) passed unanimously by the Goa legislative assembly and for the
inclusion of lessons on tobacco in school textbooks in Goa.

Dr Sharad Vaidya will be missed by the tobacco control community, his
numerous friends in India and abroad, and most of all by his wife, Dr
Nirmala Vaidya, his sons, Jayant and Shekhar, grandchildren Hrisheekesh
and Uma, and the extended Vaidya family that has a tradition of providing
social service and health care in Goa for over 300 years.