Dilip Mahalanabis
Dilip Mahalanabis (born November 12, 1934[1]) is an Indian pediatrician who received post-graduate training in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In the mid-1960s he did research on cholera and other diarrheal diseases at the Johns Hopkins International Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta, India. During the Bangladesh's war for independence he led the effort by the Johns Hopkins Center that demonstrated the dramatic life-saving effectiveness of oral rehydration therapy when cholera broke out in 1971 among refugees from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) who had sought asylum in West Bengal.
In the mid-1980s and early 1990s he was a medical officer in the Diarrheal Disease Control Programme of the WHO. Later in the 1990s he served as the Director of Clinical Research at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (the ICDDR,B).
In 1994, Mahalanabis was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2002 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Nathaniel Pierce, Dr. David Nalin and Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn, were awarded the first Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research for their contributions to the discovery and implementation of oral rehydration therapy. In 2006 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Richard A. Cash and Dr. David Nalin were awarded the Prince Mahidol Prize, also for their role in the development and application of oral rehydration therapy.[2] Oral rehydration therapy is an alternative to intravenous rehydration therapy for preventing and treating dehydration from diarrhea when intravenous therapy is not available or feasible. Oral rehydration therapy is calculated by the World Health Organization to have saved the lives of over 60 million persons.
At present, Dr. Mahalanabis lives with his wife, Dr. Jayanti Mahalanabis (a high energy physics researcher), in Kolkata, India (Calcutta) and holds the post of Director of the Society for Applied Studies (a public post), Kolkata.
Awards
- Mahalanabis received the Pollin Prize for 2002.[3]
- Mahalanabis received the 2006 Prince Mahidol Award (Thailand) (in January 2007) jointly with Drs. Richard A. Cash of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in Boston and Dr. David Nalin.[4]
References
- ↑ Kungl. vetenskapsakademien – Matrikel 1998/1999 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien. 1998. p. 84. ISSN 0302-6558.
- ↑ NOTE that the TEXT of the Mahidol Award ceremony of January 2007 notes that the Mahalanabis contribution is for the application of ORT.
- ↑ http://202.136.7.26/pub/publication.jsp?classificationID=3&pubID=3868
- ↑ "Prince Mahidol Award 2006 Ceremony". Ryt9.com. 2007-01-25. Retrieved 2016-09-10.
Further reading
- http://en.scientificcommons.org/dilip_mahalanabis
- Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of the efficacy of treatment with zinc or vitamin A in infants and young children with severe acute lower respiratory infection
- "A Simple Solution" by Andrea Gerlin, Time magazine article about the ICDDR,B
- Long-Term Oral Supplementation with Iron Is Not Harmful for Young Children in a Poor Community of Bangladesh
- A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of the Bivalent Killed, Whole-Cell, Oral Cholera Vaccine in Adults and Children in a Cholera Endemic Area in Kolkata, India