Dr. K. V. S. Latha — Professor and Head of Medical Oncology in Chennai

Dr. K. V. S. Latha is Professor and Head of Medical Oncology at MGM Healthcare in Chennai, with more than 35 years of experience. Her listed specialization is medical oncology and her qualifications are MBBS and MD.

Her procedures are the standard classes of drug treatment for cancer: chemotherapy for cancer, cancer immunotherapy and targeted therapy for cancer, together with hormone therapy listed separately for breast cancer and for gynecologic cancers. That pairing is worth noting against her affiliations, because besides MGM Healthcare she is associated with the Institute of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Madras Medical College in Chennai. A medical oncologist attached to a dedicated obstetrics and gynaecology institute sees women's cancers in volume rather than occasionally.

Her title is a teaching title, and the awards on her record are divided evenly between the two halves of that role. She won gold medals in both MBBS and MD as a student. She has since received the Best Doctor Award and the Best Teacher Award, both from The Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, which is unusual: hospitals and universities do not normally recognise the same person for clinical work and for teaching.

She has also served as principal investigator on the Hospital-Based Cancer Registry Project run by NCDIR and ICMR. Registry work is the counting behind cancer policy, recording every case a hospital treats so that national incidence and outcome figures have something solid underneath them, and a principal investigator carries responsibility for the accuracy of what her centre contributes.