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Zarir Udwadia

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Indian pulmonologist

Zarir Udwadia (born 1960) is an Indian pulmonologist and researcher. His work on drug resistant tuberculosis has led to improvements in India's National Tuberculosis Control Programme. Udwadia was the only Indian invited by the WHO to be part of the TB ‘Guidelines Group’, which formulated the 4th edition of the TB Guidelines, published in 2010. He was also the only doctor to be named among India's best strategists.

Professional life

Udwadia is a graduate of the Grant Medical College, Mumbai. He spent five years training in the UK at various centres, including Brompton Hospital, London. He practices at the P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre and the Breach Candy Hospital, in Mumbai. Approximately 8,000 patients pass through his OPD annually. Udwadia established a Chest Medicine Department at the Hinduja Hospital in 1992, and the city’s first Sleep Laboratory in 1994. He serves on the editorial board of Thorax, a respiratory medicine journal, and has authored over 140 publications.

Drug-Resistant tuberculosis

Udwadia runs a free weekly TB clinic at the Hinduja Hospital, which he set up in 1992, on his return to India, after his training in the UK. It is the busiest outpatient clinic at the Hinduja hospital, with patients traveling from many parts of the country, and some lining up overnight, to be seen by him.

In December 2011, Udwadia documented twelve cases of what he called totally drug-resistant ('TDR') TB, a strain of the disease that seemed to show resistance to all known treatments. There were only two other episodes of TDR-TB reported in the world before this- in Iran in 2009, and Italy in 2007. Along with his colleagues at the Hinduja Hospital, he published a letter describing four of these cases in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The journal letter prompted extensive media attention. Government officials publicly denied the issue, accused him of wrongly spreading panic, and a Mumbai health official seized patient samples from his laboratory.

While the WHO eventually said that defining resistance beyond XDR-TB was not recommended, Udwadia's research drew the attention of the medical community to the growing epidemic of drug-resistant TB. The coordinator of the WHO's STOP TB department called his findings a wake up call. His research eventually led to improvements in the way TB is managed in India, and elsewhere, and forced the government to make changes to the state-run TB control initiative, or the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme. The government increased the budget for the program, and dispatched rapid GeneXpert machines, which can conduct highly sensitive molecular diagnostic testing.

He continues to be an outspoken critic of the government's failures to address the TB problem, and a vocal advocate for newer diagnosis and treatment for TB patients.

References

  1. ^ "India's 'tuberculosis warrior'". 2018-03-24. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  2. ^ Iyer, Malathy. "No more jabs, now new pills to treat TB". Mumbai News. The Times of India. TNN. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  3. ^ Ubaid, Mir. "The challenges of treating drug-resistant TB in India". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  4. ^ "TB Online - The right dose, the right chance: India's battle with drug-resistant TB". www.tbonline.info. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  5. ^ "'The Ticking Time Bomb': A Doctor on Whether TB Can Be Eliminated from India". The Better India. 2019-04-04. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  6. ^ "Chest Physician in Mumbai - Dr Zarir F. Udwadia". P.D. Hinduja Hospital. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  7. ^ "India's best strategists: 15 dreamers who have translated their insight into reality". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  8. "Dr.Zarir Udwadia". TEDxGateway - India's Largest Ideas Platform (Mumbai, India). Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  9. ^ "Scepticism shrouds India's tuberculosis target". Hindustan Times. 2017-12-11. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  10. "Dr Zarir F Udwadia | Longitude Prize". longitudeprize.org. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  11. Taneja, Richa (2017-08-01). "1 Indian Dies Of Tuberculosis Every Minute, No One Is Immune, Says Expert". Everylifecounts.NDTV.com. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  12. "Editorial Board". Thorax. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  13. ^ Anand, Geeta (2016-09-02). "Battling Drug-Resistant TB, and the Indian Government". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  14. ^ Loewenberg, Samuel (2012-01-21). "India reports cases of totally drug-resistant tuberculosis". The Lancet. 379 (9812): 205. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60085-3. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 22272391. S2CID 39443765.
  15. "TB Online - India: WHO's shorter treatment for multidrug-resistant TB, city may not gain". www.tbonline.info. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  16. ^ "Totally drug-resistant TB at large in India". www.newscientist.com. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  17. Mushtaq, Ammara (2018-11-01). "United to end tuberculosis". The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. 6 (11): 818–819. doi:10.1016/S2213-2600(18)30416-8. ISSN 2213-2600. PMID 30297271. S2CID 52938483.
  18. "TB Killed Shreya Tripathi, But Her Death Could Have Been Avoided". The Wire. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
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