Dr. Banoo Jehangir Coyaji (7 September 1917 – 15 July 2004) was a pioneering Indian physician, obstetrician-gynaecologist and public-health activist. She transformed a small maternity hospital in Pune into a major teaching and research institution and pioneered community-based family planning and rural health programmes that later influenced models across the developing world.

Born Banoo Pestonji Kapadia into a well-to-do Parsi family in Mumbai, she was the only child of civil engineer Pestonji Kapadia. She was the first girl to pass the matriculation examination from the all-boys St. Vincent’s High School and simultaneously cleared her Senior Cambridge from the Convent of Jesus and Mary. After pre-medical studies at St. Xavier’s College she entered Grant Medical College, graduating with an MD in 1940. She trained in gynaecology under the renowned Dr. V.N. Shirodkar.

In 1941 she married Jehangir Coyaji, an engineer and younger brother of her mentor Dr. Edulji Coyaji. The couple settled in Pune in 1943. In 1944, at the request of the hospital’s trustees, she took charge as Chief Medical Officer of the modest 40-bed King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital. Over the next 55 years she expanded it into a 550-bed modern teaching hospital and research institute affiliated with B.J. Medical College, while continuing to operate standing on a stool because of her small stature.

“All social change is slow,” she once remarked. “And very profound social changes indeed are needed before India’s women can achieve their full potential.”

Recognising the heavy toll of repeated and poorly spaced pregnancies on women’s health, she opened Pune’s first birth-control clinic around 1947. In 1972 she established a primary health centre in the village of Vadu, 40 km from Pune; it later grew into the Shirdi Saibaba Rural Hospital. From 1977 she trained hundreds of local women (eventually a cadre of about 600) as community health workers in nutrition, hygiene, sanitation and family planning. This grass-roots model reduced infant mortality and empowered rural women; it was subsequently adapted in many other developing countries.

She served as an adviser to the Government of India and became an internationally recognised expert on reproductive health and community medicine. For her work she received the Padma Bhushan in 1989, the Punyabhushan Award, the Rameshwardas Birla National Award, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1993.

Dr. Banoo Jehangir Coyaji remained deeply involved in literature and served for three decades as a director of the Sakal group of newspapers. She passed away in Pune on 15 July 2004 at the age of 86 after a prolonged illness. Her legacy endures in the expanded KEM Hospital, the rural health network she built, and the generations of women whose health and autonomy were strengthened by her quiet, determined work.