Dr. S. Rajasekaran, Chairman, Department of Orthopaedics, Ganga Hospital, was presented the Hari Om Ashram Alembic Research Award recently.

Instituted by Medical Council of India ( MCI) the award, comprising a gold medal and a citation, was presented to Rajasekaran by President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The Hari Om Ashram Award is a premium award for the best medical research in the country and is given for an original research work done in India.

The award was given to Rajasekaran for his research in lumbar disc biology and the role of oxygen and nutritional transport into the disc.

Rajasekaran and his team also documented for the first time in world medical literature to improve nutritional transport, pharmacologically by the use of calcium channel blocking drugs. This has tremendous potential for improving the health and function of the disc and to reduce the incidence of back pain.

Rajasekaran has also been awarded with two MCI Research Awards in 2004 – Silver Jubilee Research Award and the Hari Om Ashram Alembic Research Award.