Jhuma Sankar

Jhuma completed her post-graduation training in Pediatrics as well as a fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care from PGIMER, Chandigarh. She is presently working as an Additional Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, AIIMS, New Delhi.

Her areas of research interest include sepsis and septic shock in sick children. She is presently involved in a DST-funded project, an ICMR-funded multicentre project, and intramural projects funded by AIIMS. She has over 100 publications in reputed national and international journals. She has presented over 70 papers at national and international conferences and won “Best Paper awards” on multiple occasions. Her research work has been well appreciated by international audiences too.

She has won prestigious awards such as ICMR, Kshanika Oration Award, 2021; Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) Senior Investigator Award; ICMR, HB Dingley Memorial Award and AIIMS Excellence in Research Award 2020.

She has recently published a DST-funded project comparing balanced salt solutions with saline which was a multicentre trial involving 4 centres and is the first trial from India. The study addressed an important research question regarding fluids in septic shock.

Research Experience

For the last 10 years, her focus of research has been septic shock – its recognition, management, and outcomes as it is a condition with >50% mortality in fluid refractory cases. In management, her major focus and areas of interest have been fluid therapy, hemodynamic monitoring, antimicrobial therapy, and adjuvant therapy in septic shock.

She has recently concluded 2 multicentre trials (one on fluid therapy in septic shock and another on antimicrobial therapy in sepsis) and is currently involved in two fluid therapy trials (one comparing different volumes of fluids and another different type of fluids). She has created a strong collaborative network within India, collaborating on multiple research projects in sepsis, antimicrobial resistance, respiratory conditions and septic shock with multiple institutes across the country such as AIIMS Bhubaneshwar, AIIMS Jodhpur, AIIMS Raipur AIIMS Patna, St Johns Hospital Bengaluru, JIPMER, Puducherry, Madras Medical College, Chennai, PGI Chandigarh, and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. She is also a member of PALISI, a Global health group (USA), and has been collaborating with global health groups on acute illnesses in children.

Jhuma’s contributions have been recognized at both the national and the international level:

  • National – She received two prestigious Indian Council of Medical Research awards – the HB Dingley Memorial Award, 2017 for research in pediatrics and the ICMR Kshanika Award for woman Scientist in India for the year 2021. I also received the ‘AIIMS Excellence in Research Award 2019” at the 65th AIIMS Foundation Day celebrations, AIIMS New Delhi for my work on ‘Intermittent’ versus ‘Continuous ScvO2’ monitoring in EGDT.

  • International – She received the ‘Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) Senior Investigator Award at the 9th Congress of the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies, 2018 in Singapore for my work on EGDT. In 2021, I received the Society of Critical Care Medicine STAR research achievement award for my work on balanced salt solutions versus 0.9% saline.