Dr. Zarir F. Udwadia

He is interested in all general medical problems but has special training as a chest physician. His special interests include : TB, MDR-TB, ILD, Pulmonary infections, Difficult asthma, Sleep disorders, and COVID.

He has struck the unique balance of combining a busy clinical practice with internationally acclaimed medical research. He sees over 10,000 patients annually in his extremely busy clinics many of them referred from colleagues across India.

He was the first to report cases to Totally Drug Resistant TB from India. This stirred up intense medical and media attention in 2012 with 2500 articles in newspapers and news sites across the world including BBC, CNN, Reuters, Times UK, Canadian Globe, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Science, Nature and a special feature on him in the prestigious Lancet.

He has been invited to deliver lectures and orations at prestigious conferences and universities around the world including the Royal Society of Medicine (London), the Royal College of Physicians (London), the European Respiratory Society, the American College of Chest Physicians, the International TB Union, and several lectures at Harvard University, Boston.

He was Invited to join the USAID India End-TB alliance and the Global TB Network (GTN) to pursue global TB elimination.

He has been advisor to the WHO, Geneva and helped formulate TB and MDR-TB guidelines.

In 2017 Open Magazine nominated him as one of their twenty five top minds for his impact on public health. He had given two TED talks one on Drug Resistant Tuberculosis and the other on COVID-19, both of which have been widely viewed.

COVID Related activities : Since the onset of the COVID pandemic in the early months of 2020 Dr Udwadia has been extremely busy :

• As a “hands-on” physician looking after COVID wards and ICU’s since the start of the pandemic and training the many resident doctors who work as part of his team.
• Educating doctors and medical colleagues across the country on the drug and treatment options for COVID with innumerable lectures and Zoom meetings across the globe. Special mention must be made here of : a) A WHO meeting with chief scientific advisor Dr Soumya Swaminathan, b) a session at the prestigious CROI conference, c) a guest lecture for the Australia & New Zealand Intensive care Society and d) a podcast with the editors of the prestigious NEJM.
• Actively involved in research conducting trials : a) with WHO on different drug options as part of their SOLIDARITY study, b) a trial on a novel oral anti-viral Favipiravir, c) a trial underway on the variants strains causing severe breakthrough infections, d) a trial on the incidence of pneumothorax in COVID patients in the ICU, and d) a trial auditing errors in prescriptions for home treated COVID patients before they were hospitalised.
• Educating the lay public with credible articles in the Times of India, Indian Express, BBC news interviews, and an article in the FT U.K. which was one of their most widely downloaded articles. He has also been invited to deliver 2 Asia Society lectures on COVID and a TEDX talk on COVID which have been widely viewed.
• He is on a Core Committee of doctors elected by the Supreme Court to form a National Task Force set up to address critical COVID issues like oxygen, drugs and vaccinations.