Christian Medical College Vellore

The hospital was founded by Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder in 1900. Ida Scudder was the daughter of second-generation medical missionaries from the Dutch Reformed Church in the United States of America (US) who served in India. She was born in 1870 in Ranipet, which is approximately 60 miles from Madras (known as Chennai today). As a young girl she witnessed famine, poverty and death, and vowed that she would never follow in her parents' footsteps and become a missionary. The Scudder family returned to the US on furlough in 1878 and Ida began her education. Her parents returned to India, but Ida Scudder stayed in the US attending the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies (now Northfield Mount Herman). In 1891, she was called back to India to care for her ailing mother. It was at this time that Ida became acutely aware of the lack of medical services available to women and children in India, primarily due to cultural and religious norms that did not allow male practitioners to treat females. This awareness became the driving force of her life one evening in her parents' bungalow, when a young Indian man came to the door requesting Ida's help for his wife who was struggling in childbirth. He rejected Ida's father, Dr John Scudder's care and left. Two more men came that very night with similar requests, seeking medical help for their wives in labor, but again turning down John Scudder's care. The three women and their babies died that night. The incident shook 24-year-old Ida Scudder to the core. After prayer and deep thought Ida Scudder changed the course of her life, deciding to become a doctor in the US so that she could return to India to treat Indian female patients, and train Indian women to become doctors and nurses to serve their own. She returned to the US and in 1895, enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She completed her studies in New York where she was in the first class of doctors at Cornell Medical College The hospital has eleven sites and serves over 2000 inpatients and 8,000 outpatients daily, with 67 wards, 92 clinics each day and over 150 departments/units. Each year 100 students are admitted for the undergraduate medical course MBBS. The MBBS course is recognized by the Medical Council of India. ==Administration==

The Christian Medical College is a registered voluntary, non-profit organization. John Riehl is the President of the Foundation. ==Recognitions==

CMC Vellore was conferred with the public Health Champion Award by the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2015, took Platinum Awards in every category of the prestigious SKOCH Awards in 2014. In 2015 the college won the coveted and prestigious D. L. Shah Quality Award - Gold for its Clinical Audit Programme. ==Academics==

The college offers MBBS, 57 post-graduate diploma and degree medical courses (MS, MD, DM, MCh, Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and PhD), 44 Allied Health Science courses, and 14 diploma courses in nursing and other fields, and 52 Fellowship courses. A total of about 2500 students are enrolled per year. == Rankings ==

CMC Vellore is ranked second among medical colleges in India in 2022 by India Today and first among private medical colleges by Outlook India in 2022. It was ranked third in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework medical ranking for 2023. == Services ==

There are five campuses - one, the main campus at the heart of Vellore City, the second main campus at Kilminnal in Ranipet District, Schell Eye Hospital at Kosapet,Vellore, and the mental health center at Bagayam, which is about 7 km from the main campus and a hospital near Chittoor. CMC has over 8,800 staff, including over 1,528 doctors and 2,400 nurses. and many departments are subdivided into units of particular expertise in specific areas, as in the division of Surgery which is broken down into eight units specializing in Head and Neck Surgery, Endocrine Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Colorectal surgery, etc. The Mental Health Centre, CMC's department of Psychiatry, is located on the Bagayam Campus. This center also houses the faculty for the evaluation and training of mentally challenged children, which is called Nambikkai Nilayam, a Tamil phrase meaning the Center for Hope. Radiology reports are incorporated into a film-less digital system Picture archiving and communication system (PACS), the first in the country, started in 2000. Medical professionals can view the images on any computer that is on the hospital network. Laboratory test results are also incorporated into the hospital intranet, making them accessible anywhere inside the hospital. == Community works ==

The Christian Medical College's community works are organised by its Department of Community Health, which was established in 1957. The community programs run by CMC are Community Health And Development (CHAD), Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA), College of Nursing Community Health (CONCH) and Low Cost Effective Care Unit (LCECU). In 2014 the LCECU opened the Shalom Clinic for middle-income patients. Community Health and Development (CHAD) has a Community Hospital and a Training Center located on the Bagayam Campus; this is the main site of the Community Health Department of CMC. The program serves a rural, semi-urban and tribal population of about 250,000 around the area of Kaniyambadi, including the Kaniyambadi block (82 villages), Jawadhi Hills (120 tribal villages), and urban areas such as Kansalpet, Saidapet, Sreenivasanagar and Kagithapattarai. CHAD also provides consultancy services to a population of 120,000 in Anaicut Block. Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA) is located at KV Kuppam Block, about 25 km from Vellore. It is a 70-bed secondary care health centre and has many peripheral sites in the Block. It organizes a number of field programs for the rural people around the area, providing inpatient care, mobile health services and vocational training programs, and involves over 100 local family care volunteers, serving about 135,000 people in 39 Panchayats. Efforts have been made to alleviate poverty through encouraging income generating projects and improved agricultural practices. More details about RUHSA can be found Here College of Nursing Community Health (CONCH), established in 1987, is a primary health care program managed by nurses. Home visits form the basis of this outreach program, focusing on a population of 63,199 persons living in 22 villages and 23,000 persons living on the urban periphery of Vellore City. CONCHorganizes health camps, street plays, films and exhibitions, to generate health awareness among people. CONCH also works with the District Health Administration and NGOs in implementing government health projects. Low Cost Effective Care Unit (LCECU), established in 1983 caters the health care needs of those living in the urban slums of Vellore. The program visits five slum areas weekly and makes many house visits. Doctors, Nurses and Community Health Workers provide cost effective, comprehensive health care without undue reliance on sophisticated technology. In 2014 LCECU opened the Shalom Family Medicine Center where fee-based services are offered by Doctors of Family Medicine. Shalom targets low-medium income residents of Vellore and the fees generated help subsidize the outreach programs in surrounding areas. == Significant achievements ==

CMC is the home of the South Asian Cochrane Network and Center and is also an internationally recognized Infectious Diseases Training and Research Center. The college hosts a Stem Cell Research Center, which is funded by the Indian government. A number of research programmes in CMC are funded by many national and international agencies. About 430 research articles are published in indexed peer-reviewed journals in a year (the second largest number of medical research papers of any medical college in India.). The establishments of the Fleming Memorial Research Laboratory in Virology in 1965, the Artificial Kidney Laboratory in 1976, the Betatron ICMR Centre for Advanced Research in Virology in 1978, the National AIDS Reference and Surveillance Center in 1986, the Cytogenetics Laboratory in 2002 and the Vellore Bombay Artificial Limb Bioengineering Department in 2003 are significant initiatives in the field of medical research. == Notable alumni ==

• K. A. Abraham, interventional cardiologist and Padma Shri awardee • Mahendra Bhandari, Padma Shri awardee • Nagarur Gopinath, cardiothoracic surgeon and Padma Shri awardee • Minnie M. Mathan, Ultrastructural pathologist, Gastroenterologist ==See also==