One Test at a Time

From Partition to Covid, Dr Lal PathLabs has faced a string of challenges. The future is fraught as new diseases crop up needing better diagnostics

- By Nandini Keshari

The year was 1939. Great Britain had just declared war on Germany. The British Indian Army was called into action. Not just soldiers but also trained medical personnel. With a graduation degree from King Edward Medical College in Lahore, Dr (Major) SK Lal, a trained pathologist was commissioned in Wana, South Waziristan in Pakistan.

Post-Partition, Dr SK Lal, then 31, was one of the millions of refugees who left Pakistan to start life anew in India. He together with many dependents settled in Delhi. He wanted to get back to work. But during those turbulent months everything was chaotic. Government pathological labs were in a mess.

Using his experience in the army labs, Dr SK Lal in 1949 founded Central Clinical Laboratory and Blood Bank Transfusion Centre from his home on Hanuman Road. These were arguably the first private pathological labs in India.

A new India was emerging and the challenges facing the country were myriad, poverty chief among them. Dr SK Lal's professional path too was strewn with hurdles.

There were no established suppliers, procurement chains or ready-to-use reagent kits. He had to start from scratch.

Labs and Legacy

Soon after Dr SK Lal’s death in 1977, the reigns of the lab were passed on to his son Dr Arvind Lal, also a trained pathologist in the army. Before joining his father’s lab, Dr Arvind Lal had a lucrative job as a lecturer and a hostel warden at the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune.

He had learnt the tricks of the trade from his father. There were some scary lessons too. “When I was growing up, we had rabbits, and I was very fond of them. One day, one of my rabbits went missing,” recalls Dr Arvind Lal. Little did the poor boy know that those innocent animals were being used by his father to perform Friedman test, an early form of pregnancy testing.