Excerpts from Dr. David Sack’s talk

“ICDDR,B hosts a world-famous hospital that treats about 100,000 patients a year and saves the lives of about 10,000 of them who would have died if they had not received treatment. Day after day needy patients come to this cholera hospital – we do not charge them. In the words of Melinda Gates, they come, “often more dead than alive, but by the end of the day, they leave with a new lease on life.” These patients are the truly the poorest and would have no chance for finding life-saving medical care in Dhaka or Matlab if the ICDDR,B hospitals were not there.

“I recently visited a one-year-old, severely malnourished girl staying with her mother in the nutrition rehabilitation unit following ICDDR,B treatment for dysentery. She was admitted to the ward with severe bloody diarrhoea that certainly would have taken her life. Now the problem was teaching her mother how to provide simple food that would help her recover from malnutrition. The story of the mother gives focus to the entire mission of the Centre. Her emaciated 12-month-old daughter was the fourth child of a village couple who had recently moved into Dhaka to find work. Three children had died previously: the first from drowning at age three, the second from dysentery at age 18 months when the parents could not find effective treatment in their village, the third from tetanus at age 20 days. This fourth child would certainly have died if the ICDDRB had not been here to provide care. The mother was pregnant again, but is now protected by the tetanus vaccine she received at the ICDDRB hospital while her child was being treated for dysentery.

“The problems of this one family illustrate so well the many issues that the Centre addresses in its health research, training courses, and medical services. Drowning is now recognised as the number one killer of children in rural Bangladesh. Poorly treated dysentery remains a major and growing threat. Failure to receive vaccines exemplifies an unnecessary but common event leading to needless loss of life. A pregnancy that happens too soon, migration into the city, and difficulties facing poor people trying to find proper care—these critical health challenges are integrated into the functioning of the hospital.

“Her story could be a depressing one if one looks at the unfortunate loss of three children in the same family. It can also be an optimistic one if we see the opportunity for this fourth child and the fifth, yet unborn, child to lead normal and productive lives. The mission of ICDDR,B is helping children like these. The UNWA contribution to the patient welfare fund and participation in ICDDR,B’s Black and White Ball provides funding that the government and international donors will not.

“ICDDR,B is an excellent way to give to a charity. ICDDR,B is an organization where one will be assured that every dollar, taka and pound contributed will go directly to providing services to the poorest of the poor, that the funds will be 100 percent accounted for, and that it is the poor who will truly benefit. To put it simply: giving $10 saves one life.”