Dr. Ekbal has  demonstrated broad  intellectual interests and achievements throughout his career.
From 1993 to 2000, he was Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery at the Medical College in Kottayam,
Kerala, one of the outstanding teaching hospitals in the state. Dr. Ekbal received his medical
degree in 1971, his general surgery degree in 1980, and his neurosurgery degree in 1982.
Dr. Ekbal has authored several books and articles on health in English
(E) and Malayalam (M) (the language of Kerala). These include: A
People's Drug Policy 1989 (M), Health for all Now 1990 (M), Headache 1998 (E),
Decade of the Brain 1999 (E) and The Internet and the Information Revolution (M)
1999. He has also worked on the history of modern medicine in Kerala,
cervical spinal problems of headload workers (heavy load carriers),
and neurological disorders in community medicine.
Dr. Ekbal is an active member of the Kerala People's Science
Movement, an organization dedicated to popularizing science, raising
environmental awareness, and making medicine patient-oriented, inexpensive, and
available to all. He has participated in several national and international
conferences on democratic health practices including most recently the
International Health Assembly, held in Dacca, Bangladesh, 4-8 December 2000.
Dr. Ekbal  can talk on a wide range of medical and health policy topics and also on his experience as a
member of the Kerala State Planning Board where he has been active since 1996 in
promoting the public health and health care delivery aspect of
Kerala's substantial decentralization program that has attracted international attention.
Dr. Ekbal seeks dialogue with US physicians, health administrators,
health activists, and all others who wish to make decentralization of
health services an effective means of making life better for the people of
Kerala and for people everywhere. He is also interested in sharing thoughts
about the effects of globalization on medicine and medical care in the Third World.
Dr. Ekbal is currently working with Richard W. Franke on a project
funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation entitled:
Local Democracy and Local Health Planning: New Experiments in Kerala.