Doctor couple Abhay, Rani Bang and Dr Naveen Thacker honoured with Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Champions Award

The event honoured 10 Goalkeepers Champions – experts, innovators and advocates driving progress in child survival worldwide. Among them were three Indians—Dr Abhay Bang and Dr Rani Bang for their pioneering community based health care and Dr Naveen Thacker for advancing child health through community-based innovations.

When contacted, Dr Abhay Bang told The Indian Express that it was a coincidence that the award was presented on his 75th birthday. “However, if we (Dr Rani and I) could contribute to saving lives of millions of children in this world, there couldn’t have been a better meaning in our lives,” he said. Dr Rani Bang too said that it was an honour for their organisation SEARCH and for the people of Gadchiroli.

However, according to Dr Abhay Bang, the next big challenge is to find a way to prevent non-communicable diseases, which is more difficult than reducing child mortality.

The event honoured 10 Goalkeepers Champions – experts, innovators and advocates driving progress in child survival worldwide. (Express Photo)

The Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) was set up by Dr Abhay and Dr Rani Bang at Gadchiroli. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s values, their journey reflects how deep community engagement and simple, low-cost interventions can create lasting health impact. SEARCH pioneered programmes to train rural women in pneumonia treatment and newborn care, reducing infant mortality from 121 to 16 per 1000 live births. Inspired by this model, the Government of India launched the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) programme. Today, over a million ASHA workers provide healthcare to 15 million newborns across the country. Dr Bang’s approach has now been adopted in more than 80 countries worldwide.

For Dr Naveen Thacker, it is a proud moment as this paediatrician from Gandhidham, Gujarat, was honoured as a 2025 Goalkeepers Champion. When contacted in New York, Dr Thacker, who is the Director of Deep Children Hospital and Research Centre, Gandhidham, spoke about his journey from a small town to global leadership.

As Executive Director of the International Paediatric Association, what makes Dr Thacker’s journey remarkable is the struggle behind it. In the catastrophic Kutch earthquake of 2001, his 50-bed hospital collapsed. However, he rebuilt the hospital and became more determined to serve children. A pioneer in polio eradication, he diagnosed 55 cases in a month in 1994, sparking his lifelong mission to end vaccine preventable diseases. In 2017, UNICEF recognised him as a top influencer in polio eradication worldwide.