Elvira Arya

bmj;382/jul14_9/p1607/FAF1faElvira Arya (née Coelho) was born in Entebbe, Uganda, but returned to her ancestral homeland of India to complete schooling in Mangalore, south India. She originally applied to study chemistry at Mysore university, but her mother—on discovering that her grades were sufficient to study medicine—sent a telegram from Uganda, instructing her to change course. As a result, Elvira started medical school a term late and had to catch up while also acclimatising to a new culture and local language (Punjabi). This would be the first of many occasions that she would display her extraordinary intelligence, adaptability, and perseverance.After meeting her future husband, Om, at medical school, and receiving their families’ blessings to marry (in itself no small feat, with her a Catholic from south India-East Africa, and him a Hindu from pre-partition northern India), she returned to Uganda. She completed medical officer jobs in Jinja and Kampala through the 1960s,…
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