#21 COVID: Leadership Lessons from the Frontline

Dr Mathew Santhosh Thomas is an Internal Medicine specialist with experience in academic and rural missional healthcare settings. He has led rural healthcare institutions and HIV care programmes, and served as Executive Director of Emmanuel Hospital Association, a network of 20 hospitals and 40 community programmes in North India. His wife Saira is an Anaesthetist and healthcare administrator; they have two grown-up children and recently relocated to Kerala after 38 years in North India. Passionate about teaching, Dr Mathew Santhosh Thomas focuses on leadership, strategy, and organisational planning. Neurology has been a special area of interest. Presently, he is Training In-Charge at ICMDA (www.icmda.net) and involved in governance of healthcare organisations.

Priya is the General Secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI). After graduating in medicine she completed a post-graduate degree in Community Medicine in 2001. She worked in a Community Based rural outreach programme with Bangalore Baptist hospital and then relocated to Delhi where she worked as a Palliative care physician in a hospice providing end of life care for terminally ill cancer patients. Priya joined the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI) in 2012 as Senior Programme coordinator in the Community health Department (CHD), later becoming Acting Head until, in July 2019, she took over as the General Secretary of CMAI.