Thiruvananthapuram: UK’s Prospect Magazine has named Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja winner of the Top 50 Thinkers of 2020 in its list
Fondly known as “Teacher”, Minister Shailaja came out on top after beating New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who came second.
Praising Minister Shailaja for her efforts in flattening the COVID-19 curve, the magazine describes her as ‘indefatigable’.
Early this year, when COVID-19 was still contained within China, Minister Shailaja foresaw the disease’s inevitable spread to India and took the measures necessary to tackle the virus.
The magazine read, “The top spot was overwhelmingly secured by a figure who—on first blush—is as far from a caricature intellectual of the Jean-Paul Sartre variety as you can get. That’s not quite right since, like Sartre, KK Shailaja is a communist, albeit from a party created to keep its distance from Soviet Moscow. It helps run the state of Kerala in south India, where Shailaja or “Teacher,” as she is fondly nicknamed due to a previous occupation, is the indefatigable health minister.”
Cases and deaths were kept remarkably low into the summer, although as it drew to a close they began to grow fast—just as Shailaja had warned they would. Still, as we go to press, confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the state—which has average incomes an order of magnitude lower than Britain’s, and just over half the population—were not yet 1 percent of ours.”
Speaking about Shailaja’s efforts to contain the spread of the disease, the magazine reads, “She rapidly got the WHO’s full “test, trace and isolate” drill implemented in the state, and bought crucial time by getting a grip of the airports, and containing the first cases to arrive on Chinese flights.”
In the article, Prospect Magazine also heaps praise on Kerala’s handling of the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak, which was conducted under Shailaja leadership.
Ever since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Kerala has been receiving recognition from all over the world for the way in which it has handled the pandemic.
