“I am inspired by people who forego their personal agendas to give back to communities”

Dr. Chandrakala Jaiswal, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF Bentiu Sub Office in South Sudan 

Tell us a bit about your background. 

I am an Indian born in a small remote village with 3,000 people in a tribal District of Maharashtra, India, where accessibility of Health services was a big challenge. My father always wanted me to be a good human being and serve people. For further studies he supported me to go to Mumbai to my aunts place where I completed my schooling. Right from my childhood, I always wanted to be a doctor so that I could serve the most vulnerable people. I studied Medicine in Pune and got my graduate degree (MD) in Public Health. My first job was with WHO as a Surveillance Medical officer for a polio project in Uttarpradesh, one of the most challenging states in India regarding all Heath Indicators. I worked passionately for this job and was instrumental in establishing the best Surveillance Model of the country. Here I developed my interest in children’s health and hence got my other graduate degree in Pediatrics. I never went for clinical practice because I always felt that to make a difference on a big scale, we have to be involved in policies and implementation that I would not be able to achieve doing clinical practice. Hence I joined UNICEF as a Child Health and Nutrition Consultant and enjoyed my work thoroughly because UNICEF gave me a very good platform for my dreams to come true.