Gujarat-origin doctor on front lines of HIV, Covid wars says battle readiness is key

Ahmedabad: What does it feel like when you are among the first responders for something that would eventually become HIV and Covid? For Dr Pradeep Shah, an infectious diseases specialist at Hackensack Meridian University Hospital and JFK University Medical Centre, Edison, these were some of the career-defining moments. These hospitals are among the top health facilities in New Jersey. Dr Shah, who is also an assistant professor at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, was in Ahmedabad to attend IMACON as a senior faculty member and share his experiences.
He told TOI about his Gujarati roots and the experiences of his medical career. His daughter, Dr Pooja Shah, is also following in his footsteps in the medical field. "I practised there for almost 32 years at JFK, and I went through each and every stage of my life in that hospital, starting from scratch," said Dr Shah, who recently finished his term. "You start practising, then become assistant director of the department of medicine, then director of medicine, then the secretary of the medical staff, then the vice president of the medical staff, and then president of the medical staff." Dr Shah got a chance at residency and fellowship in 1988 at Columbia University, and he seized the opportunity. It was his father's motivation that pushed him to pursue foreign scholarships. It also helped that his wife had a Green Card. "Since our times, it was a difficult field (for doctors from other countries), but my one-line message to all is, work hard!" he said. Talking about the changing nature of his work, he said that in the 1990s, he saw several patients with HIV infection. "I was in my residency, and I saw patients in their early twenties. They got a complication identified as PJP pneumonia," he said. "We had no medication for that earlier, and patients used to die in front of us. In 1995, we got protease inhibitor HIV medication that changed the way we treated it." Then Covid struck in 2020. He still remembered the day of his first patient — March 7, 2020. "We got a patient with the symptoms. In a matter of four days, the number swelled to 100," said Dr Shah. "Nobody knew what to do." He, along with his daughter, went through similar emotions of despair and hopelessness, and then a ray of hope when the first treatment modalities were shared and remdesivir was introduced. Talking about the effect of technology, he said that in countries like the US, technology adoption for AI is much faster.