About Doctor
Dr. Ravikiran Barigala is an Infectious Disease Specialist working at Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. He has 15 years of experience in his field. He has done his MBBS from Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad (2000).
After his MBBS, Dr. Ravikiran went to US for further studies and did a Master’s in Public Health (MPH)- Western Kentucky University, USA(2001-2003 where he got in-depth knowledge of various areas of public health like epidemiology, biostatistics, health awareness, sexual health, international health etc. which gave him a different perspective to look at disease from a community and public health standpoint rather than focusing on one person at a time.
He then did his MD (Internal Medicine) from Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, USA (2003- 2006), affiliated with University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he worked with doctors from all over the world and during his training did a project on hand hygiene and rising resistance rats in the hospital and community. He went on to design an intervention to increase hand hygiene by education and teaching in the hospital and surrounding nursing homes to achieve a significant improvement in hand hygiene rates. He was able to also do a rotation at the prestigious University of Chicago in infectious disease which increased his interest in infectious diseases. This interest led him to work at HIV clinic in the hospital and also publish a paper on Cryptococcal infections at American College of Physicains national conference at Philadelphia (2006).
He then worked at Lawndale clinic and at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, USA for 1 year. His work included running a large HIV clinic, substance abuse, psychiatric patients, diabetics, and many other health problems.
He then joined University of Wisconsin, at Madison, WI, USA for another super specialization in infectious diseases MD (2007-2009). Here he was able to focus in infectious disease and got to see a wide variety of infections such as simple fever to the most resistant transplant infections. He did more than 50 presentations on all topics of infectious diseases. He also trained at the VA hospital in Madison, WI taking care of US veterans who were having any infection problems. He did research on probiotics, HIV, vitamin D and prisoners and had the honour of getting the best investigator award from the international meeting of American Transplant Congress in 2008. He was also given a grant of $10000 for doing research on role of vitamin D in HIV positive women.
He has worked at multiple hospital in the US- Select Speciality Hospital, Madison, WI, Swedish American Hospital, Rockford, IL and Centegra hospital in McHenry, IL and Woodstock, IL.
He has extensive experience with using electronic medical records (EMR) since 2003. He has used EMR like meditech, VA EMR, EPIC etc. and has participated in rolling out of EMR in multiple hospitals.
He has been working at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad since 2015. He has extensive experience with treating critical illnesses in ICU and transplants patients. Due to the rising resistance rates among fungal and bacterial organisms has led him to judicious use of antibiotics. He has good success rates in treating patients with extensive drug resistance while minimising side effects from toxic drugs. He has a large HIV patient base who have been doing very well on their medications and leading normal lives. During the COVID 19 pandemic he has seen thousands of patients and vast majority of them have survived with no long term consequences.
He is also very active in academics and teaches ID fellows in Apollo ID fellowship program, residents from MD/DNB general medicine, Pharm D interns and international students. He has been the preceptor for several Pharm D thesis projects in Apollo Hospital.
He has been an avid presenter at several conferences, webinars and hospital meetings in Hyderabad, nationally and internationally. He has participated in several TV and radio shows on various topics of infectious diseases.