Madhukar Pai
Indian health academic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madhukar Pai (also known as Madhu Pai) is a Canadian medical doctor, academic, advocate,[1] writer,[2] and university professor. He is the Associate Director of the McGill International Tuberculosis Centre.[3] Pai's work focuses on global health, specifically advocacy for better treatment for tuberculosis[4][5] with a focus on South Africa and India.[6][7] Pai is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Global and Public Health in the School of Population and Global Health[8] and holds a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University.[9] He is recognised globally, and is a key leader in the decolonising global health movement - recognised for his advocacy on making global health more diverse, inclusive, and equitable.[5][10]
- Chanchlani Global Health Research Award
- Union Scientific Prize
- Haile T. Debas Prize
- David Johnston Faculty & Staff Award
Madhukar Pai | |
|---|---|
| Born | Vellore, India |
| Education | |
| Known for | Tuberculosis and public health research, equity advocacy |
| Awards |
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Education
Pai completed medical training and his community medicine residency at the Christian Medical College[11] Vellore, India.[6] He received his Ph.D. in epidemiology from University of California, Berkeley.[6] He also did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco.[6]
Committees and editorial boards
Pai serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee of FIND (the global alliance for diagnostics)[6] and is on the World Health Organization's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on In Vitro Diagnostics and the Access Advisory Committee of TB Alliance.[6] He is the Chair of the Public-Private Mix Working Group of the Stop TB Partnership.[6] Pai is also on the editorial boards of BMJ Global Health, PLoS Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases,[6] and is an Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Global Public Health.[12]
Advocacy
Pai is a frequent media commentator on the COVID-19 pandemic in India,[13][2][14] and in 2021 drew comparisons of the collective global action taken in response to the COVID19 pandemic versus the relative inaction towards tuberculosis.[15] His 2021 paper in PLOS Medicine addressed power asymmetries in global health.[16]
In 2020[17] and in 2021[18] he published papers and contributions about the decolonisation of global health work. His called to address racism and colonialism in Global Health at the AIDS 2022 conference.[19]
In 2021, Pai was critical of the global failure to widely vaccinate people against COVID-19, accused high-income nations of vaccine hoarding, and called for a waiver of intellectual property laws regarding COVID19 vaccines.[20] In 2022 he described the global response to COVID-19 as an "unmitigated disaster".[21]
Awards
Selected publications
- Pai, Madhukar; Zwerling, Alice; Menzies, Dick (2008). "Systematic review: T-cell-based assays for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection: an update". Annals of Internal Medicine. 149 (3): 177–184. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-149-3-200808050-00241. PMC 2951987. PMID 18593687. Wikidata Q22241138.
- Jennifer Furin; Helen Cox; Madhukar Pai (2019). "Tuberculosis". The Lancet. 393 (10181): 1642–1656. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(19)30308-3. PMID 30904262. Wikidata Q92572130.
- Khan, Themrise; Abimbola, Seye; Kyobutungi, Catherine; Pai, Madhukar (1 June 2022). "How we classify countries and people—and why it matters". BMJ Global Health. 7 (6) e009704. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009704. ISSN 2059-7908. PMC 9185389. PMID 35672117.