US Surgeon General Murthy's native village erupts in joy

Residents of Hallegere, a nondescript village in Mandya taluk on the Mandya-Keragodu-Koppa road, were a jubilant lot on Tuesday as Dr Vivek Murthy, who has roots here, has been appointed the youngest Surgeon General of the United States of America.

Dr Murthy is the grandson of the late H C Narayana Murthy, the former director of Mysore Sugar Company, and son of Florida-based Dr H N Lakshminarasimha Murthy and Myetraie Murthy.

Dr Murthy was born in Huddersfield in the United Kingdom and brought up in Miami, Florida. He has an elder sister, Rashmi. He received a BA from Harvard University, an MBA from Yale School of Management, and an MD from Yale School of Medicine. He is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

Dr Murthy is the co-founder and president of Doctors for America, which began in 2008 as Doctors for Obama, an organisation of 16,000 physicians and medical students which campaigned for Barack Obama during the presidential election. The group was relaunched as an advocacy group for affordable healthcare in 2009, and renamed Doctors for America. In 2011, Dr Murthy was appointed member of the US Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

Earlier, in 1995, he co-founded VISIONS Worldwide, a non-profit organisation which focuses on HIV/Aids education in India and the US. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the board of TrialNetworks, a cloud-based platform for pharmaceutical and biotechnology trials. He was one of the prominent PIOs, whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in the US during his last visit to that nation.
Dr Murthy’s uncle H N Sathyanarayana said the father-son duo—Lakshminarasimha and Vivek—were involved in social service in their ancestral place Hallegere and the surrounding villages through their ‘Scope Foundation’. He recalled that the duo had visited Hallegere in 2013 and conducted a health camp for villagers. “They have donated 100 computers to government schools and have been conducting health camps. Dr Vivek examined a few patients, along with other doctors,” he said.

H K Vasanth Kumar, a TV journalist and one of his uncles, said the people of Hallegere were happy Murthy had made all Kannadigas, Indians proud. He expressed gratitude , on behalf of his native village, to Obama and the people of US for recognising and honouring the services of Dr Murthy.