Dr Dilip Mahalanabis, who saved millions of lives by promoting the use of Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS), will be awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second highest civilian award, the Centre announced on the eve of Republic Day.
Kolkata-based Dilip Mahalanabis was a paediatrician who
started working on oral rehydration therapy in 1966. During his stint as a
research scholar at Johns Hopkins University International Centre for Medical
Research in the US, a team of doctors led by Mahalanabis developed the
life-saving solution. The other two members of the team were Devid R Nalin and
Richard A Cash.
The government said Mahalanabis demonstrated the effectiveness
of ORS while serving in refugee camps during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation
war. At the time, a huge number of people had migrated to India and settled in
refugee camps. Lack of proper hygiene and general squalor in the camps led to
outbreaks of diarrhoea and cholera. These patients were treated with ORS.
Eventually, ORS gained popularity across the globe as an
effective treatment for diarrhoeal diseases. It is estimated to have saved over
five crore lives globally. Thanks to ORS, a simple and inexpensive life-saving
solution, there has been a 93 per cent reduction in deaths due to cholera and
diarrhoea.
About Dilip Mahalanabis
Dilip Mahalanabis was born in 1934 in Kishoreganj,
Bangladesh. He graduated from Calcutta Medical College in 1958, before joining
the medical college as an intern.
When the British government launched the National Health
Service in the sixties, he had the opportunity to study medicine. After earning
two degrees from London and Edinburgh, he became the first Indian to become a
registrar at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children.
From 1975 to 1979, Mahalanabis worked in cholera control for
the World Health Organization (WHO) in Afghanistan, Egypt and Yemen. In 1983,
he was made a member of the WHO’s Diarrhoeal Diseases Control Programme.
He died on October 16, 2022 in Kolkata at the age of 87. He
was suffering from lung infection and other age-related ailments
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