Dr. Varagunan Mahadevan, a man of many feathers in his hat – family physician by profession, broadcaster by passion, Carnatic musician, teacher, charity worker and YouTube educator combining common sense and medicine. Born in Lanka, based in a suburb of Toronto, he visits his homeland often, proudly claiming it as his land and serving society.

The amiable and humorous Dr. Varagunan was born in Trincomalee and brought up in Colombo. An alumini of Royal College, Colombo, he had to flee the capital with his mother and three siblings during the ‘83 racial riots. Many moons later Life caught up with him for an interview, talking about his personal, professional and passions. He’s serving here at home and his second home, Uxbridge, Toronto. Below are the excerpts of the interview:

Q Can you give a personal background? I’m a general physician, so I’m called a family physician in Canada. I’m also a palliative care physician. I’m also associated with an university called the McMaster University. I’m an assistant professor for family medicine; they call it adjunct professor. In the academic side, I’m one of the chief examiners for the College of Family Physicians of Canada. That’s my medical side. My idea was to go into broadcasting, my passion, not into Medicine.

I wanted to become a journalist, like a broadcaster in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. But my friends and family insisted saying that I have a medical degree, why don’t I do those exams first and broadcasting on the sidelines. When I got my license here I started practicing. I also have a Diploma in Broadcasting, my passion. I used to be a Sri Lankan Broadcasting Artist those days. Side-by-side I did work for the TV stations. Later, I did a lot of talk shows, I love doing medical talks.

Q How has it been giving back to society & home? This is my personal practice life. This is my 34th year in medical practice. Among that this would be my 24th year in Canada. I don’t want to call it guilty-conscious. But Sri Lanka is the country we grew up, our childhood was spent there but are we doing anything back home? That kind of a thought rises in all of us here. Beyond that, I do different activities. Being a doctor is one thing, the other thing is, when you live in another land, you always think about the land you left behind.

Specially during Covid-19, I did a series of talk -shows, around 86 Zoom sessions. These days, I’ve stopped doing Zoom sessions and instead am doing it physically from UK, Australia, all over the place and therefore developed the desire do it at various places. I usually do medical talk- shows in two ways – talking in layman"s language and humorously as a stand-up comedian. In these ways, programmes are not boring. Believe it or not, all these work are all volunteer work. Even when I was doing volunteer work for Canada, I was a proud volunteer.

Q Unexpectedly, switching from Broadcast to Medical. You have done it out of a labor of love. Did you expect you will have to switch over, though? Not a career switch. Broadcasting was my passion; Medicine is my profession. I go very parallelly and enjoy both. Not a career switch.

Q Can you explain a few of the key & impactful projects here at home? That’s another dimension to our life here. So, the thought rose in the US. Most of them doctors in 2004, after the Tsunami. There is a lot of money and effort going into our birth country. Why don’t we organise something in an open way and rather than doing in individual, small projects. Why don’t we consolidate all the energy and maybe start a small organisation.

So, after the tsunami in 2004, we discussed how about contacting the Sri Lankans and asking them what they need and how can we help? That saw the birth of an organisation called – International Medical Health Organisation. This was started in the US. We don’t send money that easily, instead send medical supplies, dry rations, helping people to rebuild their life back (building their houses etc).

We don’t do individual help. For an instance, someone needs a heart surgery, we don’t do those. We do community and sustaining projects. When we get a request or an appeal, we do all the background research, assess their needs. We get the needs, the projects from the ground. We analyse, we do a very thorough needs assessment and then board approves that this is needed, then we will definitely support the project.

We are not replacing the government. We want the government to do everything and all that, but what we do is, what the government is struggling to do, what the public needs we help. Simply because you approach us for a cheque for a medical equipment, we don’t easily entertain that. So about five years ago, this is before COVID, we got a grant from the Canadian Government. This was for a gender equality project, or women empowerment project. So initially we underwent a lot of issues with the local organizations, but finally, we selected two organizations, one in Kilinochchi, it’s called Kilinochchi Mental Health Society, and one in Batticaloa- it is called New Arrow, a women’s organization. So, we are actually finishing them by next month. The project is coming to an end. It was around 650 Canadian dollar project.

We also created the diabetic section in the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, and that is I think one of the best centres in the whole island. These are only the tip of the iceberg of projects. There’s another big project, I want to actually highlight. We called it palliative care project. This is still a budding thing in Sri Lanka. It’s called comfort care. So let’s say patient A is diagnosed with cancer. Okay, so he is now going on, getting his chemotherapy at surgery, and then he had some radiation, and the doctors say he’s okay. The cancer is cleared, and, you can live your normal life. Then, after some time, then he gets the same symptoms and then the doctors find, hey, I’m sorry, the cancer is spreading to your brain, your bones, everything. You’re going to live only three months. You see this every day, right? And I’m just giving you an example. You see many people. So palliative care starts, when definitive treatment ends, and then the doctors have given up.

So this kind of a situation, let me explain about what happens in Canada, first. Then we can actually compare situations between Sri Lanka and Canada. So, in Canada, what happens is, I give an example of patient A and so this patient had cancer, and this patient has no other treatment. He’s predicted to die in about two to three months. So what do you do now? So Canada, there comes the palliative care. That means it’s Comfort Care.

We don’t treat the disease, we don’t treat the cancer, but treat his symptoms. If he has pain, we will treat his pain. If he has fever, we will treat his fever. If he has like swelling of the legs, we will treat the swelling, but we won’t be giving a curative treatment, that is called palliative care. So that means patient will be declining in their health, and at the end, we call it end of life care. End of life care is part of palliative care.

So what happens in Canada is a palliative care team is set up with the team leader, with a doctor, a nurse, and we don’t treat only the physical symptoms. We also treat the psychological treatment. Patients will be depressed, and we also treat their social treatment. So socially they will be isolated. This guy will be the breadwinner, but now suddenly he’s unable. He’s bedridden. So we treat the the family. We treat the whole community. One of our teams were visiting Sri Lanka in 2017. They visited Northern Province, and they were discussing about palliative care, and it’s mostly done by the cancer specialist in Sri Lanka, because it’s mostly cancers. Eventually, we got two doctors sponsored, trained and sent them to Hyderabad.

Q How long have you engaged with this & do you partner with anyone here at home? Yes. So we have different organizations giving us support here. One very successful project happening in Kilinochchi and Batticaloa, and the two local organisations are Kilinochchi Mental Health Society and in Batticaloa, the New Arrow. These are the two, answering your question. We work with Ramakrishna Mission. We have worked with St John’s College, it is called SJC’87 organization. We worked with many hospital organizations – Jaffna teaching hospital Welfare Society, Vaddukotai Welfare Society. So we’ve done so many projects. We have ground partners. Organisations working in NGO’s, working on the ground, who can give us data. We have doctors and health care professionals.

Q How do you monitor Lankan activity from Toronto? So again, we get reports from our locals thanks to technology.

Q How have been the funds mobilisation and how much is this a need going forward? Funds are from volunteers and donors. But, recently, the Canadian Government gave us a grant for the Women Empowerment Project. So, yes, once we got a big grant from the Canadian government. Sometimes, we get big donations from expatriates.

Q How frequently do you visit SL? There is no hard and fast number of visits. Depends on the need of the visit. Sometimes, I combine my family visit along with my projects. For all these visits, we pocket out our own money. Organisations don’t pay for anything. It’s for our passion we do it. I love to visit Sri Lanka, after all it’s my land.

By Pranavesh Sivakumar