Melinda Gates visits icddr,b

At the start of January, the co-chair of the Gates Foundation Melinda Gates visited icddr,b during a visit to Bangladesh to meet foundation grantees and explore maternal health, child health and women’s issues.

Over the course of her three-day visit, Ms. Gates toured the Dhaka Hospital, met with icddr,b scientists and travelled to icddr,b field sites in Dhaka’s densely populated suburbs.

In Mirpur, to the north-west of the city, Ms. Gates visited the foundation-funded ICVB (Introduction of Cholera Vaccine in Bangladesh) project, where 240,000 people are enrolled in a feasibility study to assess the effectiveness of mass cholera vaccination, combined with behaviour change education and tools.

Ms. Gates also visited the Mirpur field office of the foundation-funded, multi-country MAL-ED (malnutrition and enteric disease) project, which is investigating the relationship between malnutrition and intestinal infections and the consequences of these conditions on various aspects of child development.

The following day, Ms. Gates travelled to the south of Dhaka, to the Kamalapur field site where icddr,b is participating in the PERCH (Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health) project, a seven-country study investigating the current and likely future causes of childhood pneumonia in some of the world’s hardest hit populations.

In all locations, Ms. Gates took the opportunity to meet mothers and children both in icddr,b’s field clinics, and in the community.

In a series of on-line columns in the New York Times, written shortly after her visit, Ms. Gates mentioned that she had “had the chance to visit the world-class research centres at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, or icddr,b for short.” She discussed the impact of icddr,b’s family planning work in Matlab, and also highlighted the innovative approach to behaviour change interventions that she had seen in the ICVB project in Mirpur.

icddr,b has worked closely with the Gates Foundation for over a decade. In 2001, icddr,b received the first ever Gates Award for Global Health in recognition of the institution’s discovery and development of Oral Rehydration Solution. Today, icddr,b is the only institution involved in all the major Gates Foundation’s research projects focused on pneumonia and diarrhoeal and enteric diseases.

For more information, please contact icddr,b’s Head, Communications & Development, Graham Judd