Dinesh Mohan

Abstract

Bioengineer who specialised in road safety and injury prevention and human rights activist. Born on April 4, 1945, in what is now Lahore, Pakistan, he died of COVID-19 in Delhi, India, on May 21, 2021, aged 76 years. Dinesh Mohan was best known for his groundbreaking research on road safety and the broader health impacts of transportation policies. Yet whether he was investigating human rights abuses or attempting to improve agricultural practices to reduce injuries, he was driven by a need to “challenge conventional wisdom and come out with alternative solutions that would help the poor”, said Mathew Varghese, an orthopaedic surgeon and the former director of St Stephen's Hospital in Delhi, India. Mohan came from an engineering background and received a bachelor of technology in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 1967. He continued his education in the USA, receiving a master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Delaware in 1970 and a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Michigan 5 years later. Mohan then joined the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Washington, DC, where his work included evaluating injuries to vulnerable road users. That experience was “extremely influential”, teaching him to “address the structural determinants of injuries”, said Kavi Bhalla, a student of Mohan's, who is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences of the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, IL, USA. When he returned to India 3 years later, Mohan established a base at IIT Delhi from which he would become a “powerful advocate for the safety of vulnerable road users”, said Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK. While holding a series of professorships at IIT Delhi for more than three decades, Mohan did research into improved helmet designs for motorcyclists and safer auto-rickshaws, among other innovations. In 2002, he also helped set up the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP), IIT Delhi. “He understood that transportation needs more than narrow, engineering solutions and was promoting interdisciplinarity to solve these complex problems”, said Geetam Tiwari, the Ministry of Urban Development Chair Professor for Transport Planning in IIT Delhi's Civil Engineering Department and TRIPP. “Pushing for evidence-based road safety interventions is what was really important to him”, Bhalla said. Mohan “understood the power of data collection, of epidemiological study”, said Varghese. Recognised as a global leader in the field, Mohan was one of the authors of the seminal WHO and World Bank 2004 World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. He later helped found the not-for-profit Independent Council for Road Safety International. The zeal that guided his road safety work also led him into other fields. For example, with colleagues he researched burn injuries from fireworks during annual Diwali festivities and found that most victims had not been treated with cold water, leading the researchers to collaborate on media campaigns on this issue. “It was a huge success”, said Varghese, who helped with the research. “People were coming to the hospitals with their hands dipped in buckets of water.” Mohan also understood the importance of interventions that the most vulnerable could easily and affordably adopt. When he investigated injuries to agricultural workers in rural communities, Mohan learned that injuries by increasingly powerful machines and equipment were “more frequent than diseases like malaria, hepatitis and chickenpox”, as he wrote in 1993, and he called for inexpensive, practical safety features. “Here is somebody talking about the poorest of the poor and how you make them safe, how to find the solution to make it work for them”, Varghese said. A dedicated human rights activist, Mohan was involved in efforts to document and hold accountable the perpetrators of anti-Sikh violence that occurred after the 1984 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He also contributed to efforts to improve relations between India and Pakistan, including helping found the Pakistan–India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy in 1994. “Dinesh was a pioneer, a visionary who was able to think out of the box”, said Etienne Krug, WHO's Director of the Department of the Social Determinants of Health. “He was provocative, but always with the noble intention of moving the needle towards justice and by keeping in mind the realities and needs of people living in low-income settings.” Mohan is survived by his wife, Peggy, and daughter, Shivani.