Vidya Krishnan is a health-focused Indian investigative journalist and author, based in Montreal.^[1]

Krishnan reported that she was the survivor of sexual harassment at India Today in 2018 and received online abuse and death threats due to her reporting about the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.^[2][3]

She comes from a tamil brahmin family^[4] and is known for her book about Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped our History.^[5]

Krishnan started her career in 2003 at The Pioneer newspaper. As a freelance journalist, she regularly writes for Foreign Policy,^[6] The Caravan,^[7] and The Atlantic,^[8][9] and was previously the health editor for The Hindu.^[10]

She has reported on issues including the Rohingya genocide, tuberculosis, the right to health movement, and ethical standards in Indian clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs.^[11][12]

In 2020, after years of health reporting, Krishnan spoke about navigating high levels of online harassment while reporting on COVID-19^[10] including receiving death and rape threats.^[13]

Throughout 2021, Krishnan was critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.^[14][15] She spoke about how the pandemic is disproportionately affecting poor people, and that the response is not led by scientists.^{[16][17][18][19]}

Krishnan delivered the Dr C.V.S. Sarma Memorial Lecture at the University of Hyderabad in November 2021, titled Science Denialism & Democracy.^[20]

• Vidya Krishnan, 2022, Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped our History, PublicAffairs, ISBN 9781541768468^[21][22]

Krishnan won a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University to study the impact of behavioral economics on antibiotic use, with a specific focus on self-medication and antibiotic resistance.^[12]

In 2017, she received the International Health Media Fellowships award.^[23] She has won the Oxford University's global health journalism fellowship, a National Press Foundation fellowship, and McGill University's global health media scholarship.^[24]