Dr. Bharat Pankhania specialises in the control and management of infectious illnesses, examining the roles played by human, environmental, and microbial behaviours in the emergence and spread of illness.
In 2020, he rose to prominence as a well-informed and friendly media spokesman, providing updates, analysis, and opinion during the Covid-19 pandemic. He served as a voice of measured analysis providing people with easy-to-understand explanations of what was going on. Bharat recalls, “I said it in my own way, and people appreciated it.”
At the age of 14, Bharat immigrated with his family, who are originally from Gujarat, India, from his birthplace of Kenya to Leicester, England. While the education system in Kenya was excellent, his school in Leicester decided that recent immigrants were too far behind in their coursework to sit the GCE examinations. Bharat educated himself outside of the formal school system by studying into the early hours, and borrowing many books from the public library to study. He had an ally in his grandfather who paid for his GCE examinations, which he sat privately.
After his A Levels, where he had to resort to more self-study, Bharat achieved four A levels in the sciences and the Welsh National School of Medicine accepted him to read medicine. After medical school Bharat did his GP training, followed by further training in paediatrics and respiratory medicine, and then in public health medicine at London’s St Georges Hospital. “As a public health physician, I am passionate about the determinants of ill health, especially those due to poor opportunities, poverty and government inaction. The best mantra for health and wellbeing are the first ten years of life and a good education; education is power. Education has been my liberation.”
Bharat moved to Bath in 1991 and in 2008, as his family was growing, he discovered a house with a spacious, secluded, south-facing garden in Combe Down. He, his wife Alison, and their two children have lived there ever since. Their home used to have a huge carbon footprint, but it is now a model of what can be achieved with retrofitting and energy-saving measures, with an air source heat pump, solar panels, underfloor heating and insulation.
In all his positions, Bharat has been the inspirational educator. In fact the University of Exeter Medical School named him the best inspirational instructor while he was a senior clinical instructor. In addition to serving as the Combe Down Liberal Democrat councillor, he was Bath’s deputy mayor from 2023 to 2024. Due to his experiences with poverty and adversity Bharat is determined to try and achieve for everyone a fair chance to improve their lives into adulthood.
