A Mystique among microbes

A story I really enjoyed working on. Melioidosis is a massively under-diagnosed bacterial illness in India because of how different it looks in different people. It is also a bio-terrorism agent, caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a bacterium very similar to B. mallei that causes Glanders. And B. Mallei is one of the few bacteria that has actually been deployed as a bio-terror agent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glanders

Read my story here.

Scrub typhus is behind most encephalitis in Gorakhpur

My story in Science Magazine about the growing consensus on a historically controversial but compelling hypothesis 

Why H1N1 is going to keep coming back and India needs a vaccination policy

My story for The Wire. 

Why don't oral vaccines work well in India?

My story for The Ken describes an important problem facing Indian immunization drives: most oral vaccines such as cholera, polio and rotavirus, are only half as effective in India as they are in developed countries. Why does this happen, and what can researchers do to fix this? Read my story here. You will need a free subscription to The Ken (which is mostly paywalled) to access this article.

A toilet or safe drinking water -- the stark choice facing many in rural India

My story for The Guardian explores how the rapid pace of the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan and blind focus on building a large number of toilets could lead to drinking-water pollution. Read it here

The enemy in the shadows: The long search for the causes of encephalitis in India

My story for Fountain Ink Magazine explores why encephalitis is still called a mystery disease in large parts of India. Read it here.

Can India keep its promises?

My story in Science Magazine about whether India's climate pledge is inclusive enough