THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Dr Sanjeev V Thomas, professor, and head of the department of epilepsy, Sree Chitra Thirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), Thiruvananthapuram, has been awarded the prestigious Ambassador for Epilepsy Award at the 33rd International Epilepsy Congress held at Bangkok in Thailand.
The award was presented to the neurologist for his outstanding contribution to the cause of epilepsy. It’s for the first time that a Malayali is winning the prestigious award. Dr Sanjeev is the sixth Indian to win this award, which is a very important global award in the field of epilepsy.According to Dr Sanjeev, 70 per cent of epileptic cases are curable. He added that there are 10 epileptic cases per 1000 people in India and the male to female ratio is the same.
“Surgery is done when medication fails. Women suffer more because of social stigma and may have problems during pregnancy. However, over 90 per cent of the epileptic women give birth to normal children,” said Dr Sanjeev.He added that anyone can have the disease and it can range from a toddler less than one year to an 80-year-old. However, it affects old people and children the most.
Dr Sanjeev has been working with SCTIMST since 1990. He completed his doctoral degree in Neurology in the year 1988 and has published works in international journals.He had also won an Honours Fulbright Visiting Lecture Fellowship (2010-11) to Ohio State University, Columbus, and was ICMR International Visiting Fellow (2009) to visit the University of Texas, USA.
Dr Sanjeev also received a Fogarty Fellowship on Epilepsy (1994) at NIH, Bethesda, USA, and has done extensive research in management of intractable epilepsy, epilepsy and pregnancy and other related gender issues of epilepsy.
His other areas of interest are cognitive and neuropsychological aspects and benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes. Another major research of Dr Sanjeev is in the genetic aspects of epilepsy, pharmacogenomics of epilepsy and oxidative stress of epilepsy.