Honorary doctorate for India’s Covid champion

Currently a professor of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, India, Dr Bhargava also serves as Executive Director of the School of International Biodesign and previously led India’s Department of Health Research as its Secretary and Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research. 

At a ceremony at the University's Docklands Campus on 15 January 2025, Dr Bhargava said it was an honour to receive the prestigious accolade, which he would “cherish forever.”

During his acceptance speech, he took time to impart some words of wisdom to the graduating students from UEL’s School of Health, Sport, and Bioscience, sharing four traits that should be cultivated and protected – punctuality, integrity and extreme honesty, professional competence, and societal commitment.

He said, 

Whatever you have learnt at this university, nurture that and be competent.”

In recent years Dr Bhargava has been at the forefront of managing several public health crises in India including the COVID-19 pandemic where Indian research played a key role in shaping contemporary global practice through vaccine development. 

His extraordinary efforts during this period, working at pace to deliver a cost-effective and safe vaccine, were the subject of his 2021 book Going Viral, which has since been immortalised on the silver screen, in the 2023 Bollywood film The Vaccine War with the lead character played by renowned actor Nana Patekar.  

Following his tenure with the Indian Government, Dr Bhargava joined the Holy Family Hospital in Delhi, where he is currently a Dean and Senior Consultant. He holds a number of other advisory and director roles including at Meril, an Indian company making heart valves that are exported to more than 60 countries, including the UK, as well at Cipla, the oldest pharmaceutical company in India, known for its work in revolutionising HIV treatment across the world, and Molbio Diagnostics, which makes tuberculosis diagnostic kits. 

His work in tuberculosis is a current focus, having set up a small NGO which screens patients for the infectious disease in the slums of Mumbai. 

Another passion of Dr Bhargava’s is fostering innovation in young people, as evidenced by his work to establish a ground-breaking fellowship programme with Stanford University and the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, to train young doctors, entrepreneurs, and engineers to develop low-cost medical devices. 

The initiative, guided by his belief in the ingenuity of Indian youth, has yielded remarkable results, with more than 30 low-cost devices developed by his mentees now contributing to improved healthcare access across India and beyond, with some having received FDA approval for use in the US. 

Beyond his on-the-ground work, Dr Bhargava has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals and served as editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal Innovations and of the Indian Journal of Medical Research. He received numerous national and international awards including the Padma Shri, India’s highest civilian award in 2014, and the Dr Lee Jong-Wook Memorial Prize for Public Health in 2019. 

He says, looking back on his life and career to date, that he has “no regrets” with his advice to those at the start of their adult lives to seize every opportunity and focus on what’s important. 

He said, “There will be lots of distractions, there will be lots of people pulling you down, and there will be certain opportunities which you feel will be very good in the short term, but in the long term are not good. Do not succumb to those … just ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.