International Health
Child Injury Prevention Elizabeth Towner has been invited by UNICEF Bangladesh to be a
consultant on an independent evaluation of a community-based programme of child injury prevention in Bangladesh and to work with a local research company, SURCH to support the study. Childhood injury is one of the major causes of death in children in Bangladesh – each year 30,000 children die as a result of injuries. The PRECISE - Prevention of Child Injuries through Social-Intervention and Education programme is being implemented and evaluated by Dr Fazlur Rahman and colleagues from the Centre for Injury Prevention Research in Bangladesh (CIPRB). This independent evaluation will provide useful evidence for UNICEF on which components of the programme have been working effectively.
Elizabeth Towner is a co-author of the overview chapter of WHO/ UNICEF’s ‘First World Report on Child Injury Prevention’ (to be published in December 2008)’. She was an invited speaker in a session on the child injury issue organised by Dr Margie Peden at the 9th World Conference on Injury Prevention in Merida, Mexico in March 2008. She is also an editor and author of WHO Europe ‘ First European report on Child Injury Prevention, which is to be published in December 2008. She is a mentor on WHO’s MENTOR VIP global mentoring programme for violence and injury prevention. She is a member of the project steering committee of the ‘Effective Measures in Injury prevention project led by the Consumer Safety Institute in Amsterdam, a member of the expert group of the WHO Europe Child Environment and Health action Plan for Europe and member of the expert group of the Child Safety Action Plan Project.
Birth Asphyxia Matthew Ellis is a Principal Investigator in a controlled trial of community based bag-valve-mask resuscitation for newborn infants who do not breathe at birth in Bangladesh in collaboration with the Perinatal Care Programme of Bangladesh, a local NGO hosted by the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh and colleagues from University College London. This follows up his doctoral research in Nepal demonstrating the importance of birth asphyxia as a cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity in low income settings.
Matthew is currently a Technical Advisor to the World Health Organisation on birth asphyxia advising on the development of case definitions for birth asphyxia and has been an expert contributor to a series of meetings (2005 and 2006) on birth asphyxia convened by the Programme for Global Paediatric Research.
We have demonstrated the feasibility and user acceptance of bag-valve-mask resuscitation by traditional birth attendants (TBA's) in three large diverse home delivering populations in Bangladesh. We have successfully established a community based perinatal health monitoring system based on a network of traditional birth attendants who ascertain deliveries backed up by our monitoring personnel who conduct home based interviews. We now hope to use this infrastructure to conduct the first large scale community based neurodevelopmental follow up study for high risk infants born at home in a low income setting.
Outcome of low birthweight at term in North east Brazil Alan Emond is collaborating on a research project with Universidade Federal do Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, Brazil, the London School of Hygiene and the Institute of Child Health in London. The study is investigating the developmental, growth and behavioural outcome at 8 years of children born at term weighing less than 2500g, using a cohort enrolled in 1992-1993. Analysis has shown the worst outcomes in growth and development are found in those low birthweight (LBW) babies who are exposed to environmental and nutritional deprivation in the first 6 months of life. These findings have led on to an intervention programme based in nurseries targeted at young mothers from deprived urban communities in Recife with LBW babies, helping them to stimulate their infants. Alan Emond was an invited plenary speaker at the tri-annual Brazilian Paediatric Congress in Recife in October 2006.