Abdullah H. Baqui is a public health scientist who demonstrated the effectiveness of simple but effective strategies to reduce preventable newborn deaths. [1]
Abdullah H. Baqui is a public health scientist who demonstrated the effectiveness of simple but effective strategies to reduce preventable newborn deaths. [1]
Baqui was born and grew up in Gopalganj district in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He graduated from Dhaka Medical College in 1976, and completed his Masters studies in Public Health (MPH) and Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA in 1985 and in 1990 respectively.
Baqui's research confirmed: (a) the use of zinc supplementation during diarrhea to reduce the severity of child mortality. [2] (b) the effectiveness of trained community health workers providing home based health care to reduce neonatal mortality by one-third. [3] and (c) use of Hib vaccination in Bangladesh to reduce the incidence of meningitis and X-ray documented pneumonia in children. [4] WHO and UNICEF have now recommended the use of zinc as an adjuvant therapy for diarrheal episode. Bangladesh developed a national neonatal health strategy in 2009 that references Baqui's work. [5] More recently a WHO-UNICEF joint statement recommends home visits by trained community health worker as a strategy to improve neonatal survival, based in part on Baqui's research. [6]
Baqui became a professor in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009.[ citation needed ]
In May 2012, the CORE Group honored Baqui with the Dory Storms Child Survival Recognition Award. [7] Baqui also received a recognition award in 2012 from the Bangladesh Medical Association in North America. [8]
The Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study, was a multicentre, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, which provided the initial data that supported the use of the cholesterol-lowering drug, simvastatin, in people with a moderately raised cholesterol and coronary heart disease (CHD); that is people who had previously had a heart attack or angina. The study was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Merck and enrolled 4,444 people from 94 centres in Scandinavia.
The Heart Protection Study was a randomized controlled trial run by the Clinical Trial Service Unit, and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in the United Kingdom. It studied the use of the cholesterol lowering drug, simvastatin 40 mg and vitamin supplementation in people who were at risk of cardiovascular disease. It was led by Jane Armitage, an epidemiologist at the Clinical Trial Service Unit.
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