The Physician Who Tamed Kala-Azar in Bihar: The Story of Dr. Mohan Mishra

On 19 May 1937, in the village of Koilakh in Madhubani district of Bihar, a boy named Mohan Mishra was born who would one day change the treatment of one of the region’s most dreaded diseases. After completing his medical education and earning his MD, he joined Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) in 1962 as a resident medical officer. He remained there for more than three decades, rising to Professor of Medicine in 1979 and Head of the Department of General Medicine in 1986, before taking voluntary retirement in 1995.

In between he travelled to the United Kingdom, securing the MRCP in 1970 and later the FRCP from Edinburgh (1984) and London (1988). Back in Bihar he focused on the stubborn problem of visceral leishmaniasis—better known as kala-azar—a parasitic disease that had long plagued the Mithila region and claimed countless lives.

At a time when treatment options were limited and often ineffective, Dr. Mishra studied the use of Amphotericin B (Fungizone). His pioneering report, co-authored and published in The Lancet in 1991, demonstrated its efficacy. The work, some of it supported by the World Health Organization, helped establish Amphotericin B as a key—and eventually foremost—drug for treating kala-azar in India. Generations of patients in Bihar and beyond benefited from the clearer path to recovery that his research helped open.

Beyond the clinic he wrote A Textbook of Clinical Medicine (published by Oxford University Press) and several works on Indian history and the freedom movement. He also collaborated on research into removing arsenic from drinking water. In 2014 the Government of India conferred upon him the Padma Shri for his contributions to medicine. He had earlier received the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Oration Award and recognition from the Delhi Administration for his literary efforts.

Dr. Mohan Mishra passed away on 6 May 2021 in Laheriasarai, Darbhanga, at the age of 83. In later years a road near his home was named in his honour.

One afternoon, after reviewing yet another case of kala-azar that had responded to treatment, a young colleague asked him, “Sir, why persist so long with a disease that many considered almost hopeless?”

Dr. Mohan Mishra looked up with the quiet conviction of a physician who had spent a lifetime in the same region where the disease thrived.

“Because these patients are our own people,” he said. “Kala-azar does not wait for perfect conditions or perfect hospitals. If we can find a reliable way to treat it—and prove that way works—then fewer families will lose fathers, mothers and children. The science matters only when it reaches the village. That is why we kept going.”

And so the physician from Madhubani who trained in Bihar and Britain, who taught and treated at Darbhanga Medical College, and who helped turn Amphotericin B into a practical weapon against kala-azar, is remembered for bringing hope to a disease once feared as almost incurable—leaving behind both a medical legacy and the simple example of a doctor who stayed rooted in his land and served it with steady, determined care.