Dr. Ramchandra Vishwanath Wardekar
(Padma Shri, 1973 – Medicine)

In the villages around Sevagram in the early 1950s, a quiet revolution in public health was taking shape under the guidance of a soft-spoken pathologist who had once run a comfortable private practice in Bombay. Dr. Ramchandra Vishwanath Wardekar, born on 27 October 1913 in Pune, had trained at Grant Medical College, earning his MBBS in 1940 and later an MD in Pathology—at a time when qualified pathologists were rare in India. He could have remained in the city, prosperous and respected. Instead he walked away from private practice to serve at the rural hospital in Sevagram and care for the health of the surrounding villages, drawn by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

After Gandhi’s death, funds set aside for leprosy work led to the founding of the Gandhi Memorial Leprosy Foundation. In 1952 Wardekar became its Director. At that time most leprosy work meant isolating patients in asylums. Wardekar saw the disease differently—as a public-health challenge that could be controlled in the community.

He introduced what became known as the Survey, Education and Treatment (SET) approach: trained workers went house to house, educated people to reduce fear and stigma, detected cases early, and treated patients in their own homes with the newly available sulfone drugs. “We do not need to lock people away,” he would tell his team. “We need to find them early, teach the community that leprosy is treatable, and give the medicine where the patient lives.”

The method was tested first around Sevagram and then expanded to thirteen centres across India. What began as a bold experiment became the foundation of India’s National Leprosy Control Programme and influenced the approach later adopted by the World Health Organization. Colleagues and workers remembered a man of austere habits and deep compassion—someone who listened carefully to patients, trained paramedical staff with patience, and insisted that science and humanity must walk together.

One field worker, after a long day of surveys, once asked him why he had left a secure city practice for this often difficult work.
Wardekar replied simply, “Because the patients are waiting in their homes, not only in institutions. If we can reach them there, we can stop the disease from spreading and give them back their dignity.”

He served on expert committees of the Government of India and the Indian Council of Medical Research, and briefly as a consultant to the WHO. In 1973 the nation honoured him with the Padma Shri. Around the same time he stepped back from active direction of the Foundation and devoted himself to the study of scriptures he had long wished to explore more deeply. He later received the International Gandhi Award for his contributions.

Dr. Wardekar passed away on 1 August 1996. Those who worked with him still speak of the quiet doctor from Pune who helped transform leprosy control in India from isolation to community care, and who is remembered as the father of modern leprosy control in the country.