Binila Chacko

Binila is an intensive care physician who has completed her ICU fellowship from the Australian College of Intensive Care Medicine. She is currently heading the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore in India. CMC Vellore is among the top 3 medical colleges in the country and is over 120 years old. At this moment, in the main hospital campus, there are 2400 beds of which 150 are ICU beds catering to general medical, surgical, cardiac, cardiothoracic, and neurocritical care for both adult and pediatric patients. On average, there are over 10,000 ICU admissions every year. The ICU at CMC Vellore is accredited with the Australian College of Intensive Care towards training for the Australian ICU fellowship and runs several other ICU training programs in the country.

Binila is involved in patient care and has teaching responsibilities for medical students, postgraduate and advanced ICU trainees. She is the coordinator for the Very BASIC and CaRe programs associated with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her special interests in Critical Care include toxicology, tropical diseases, antimicrobial stewardship, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and ECMO. She has a passion for research and has been a PI and co-investigator for several research projects. She has several publications and book chapters to her credit.

Binila has added administrative responsibilities on the hospital front and is the Deputy Director of Quality and is a member of the Group for acquiring appropriate technology in the hospital. On the national scene, she is a member of the ISCCM research group and is the Associate Editor of the Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine. Following her research publication on “Non-invasive Ventilation in the Management of Respiratory Failure Due to COVID-19 Infection: Experience From a Resource-Limited Setting”, she is now a Guideline Development group member for the WHO Living Guideline on Clinical Management and COVID-19.