In 1971, Dr. Chowdhury left England and returned to his homeland to join in the war of liberation for Bangladesh. He was involved in setting up the first field hospital for freedom fighters and refugees, which was run by a team of Bangladeshi doctors, medical students and volunteer workers. Based upon this experience, Dr. Chowdhury took on the challenge of developing an effective rural health care delivery system, establishing Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK, The People's Health Center) in 1972.
Today, GK is a multifaceted community and development program encompassing activities ranging from agricultural cooperatives, community schools, primary health care centers and hospitals, and women’s vocational training centers to economic enterprises to help finance trust activities. Over the past three decades, many successful programs have been created under GK's auspice, including paramedical training and family planning services, which have helped lower maternal and infant mortality rates and reduce growth rates; a model rural health insurance system; revenue generating enterprises such as Gonoshasthaya Pharmaceuticals and Gono Mudran (Gonoshasthaya Printing Press); and Gono Bishwabidyalay (Peoples University), which will offer courses in development and social sciences, local governance, and health sciences.
Dr. Chowdhury has received many honors for his tireless efforts on behalf of the Bangladeshi people, including the Swedish Youth Peace Prize in 1974, the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1985, and his nation's highest honor, the Independence Day Award in 1997.
Award Presenter
Malcolm Potts, M.B., B.Chir., Ph.D., Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, is an internationally respected family planning, reproductive health and AIDS prevention researcher. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty, Dr. Potts served for 10 years as the medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. From 1978 to 1990, he was chief executive officer of Family Health International (USA), and in the 1990's he founded International Family Health (IFH) in London. The recipient of many honors, Dr. Potts has authored fourteen books and over 300 scientific papers and articles.
The Challenge: Global Burden of Disease
While extraordinary advances in health status were achieved in the last century, the global burden of disease from infectious, nutritional, maternal, perinatal, and tobacco-related causes remains high, particularly in the developing world.
More than 200 million people live today in countries with an average life expectancy of less than 45 years. Average life expectancy at birth in 1999 was 49.2 years in the least developed countries, compared to 61.4 years for all developing countries and 75.2 years for developed countries. The child mortality rate in the least developed countries in 1999 was 156 per 1,000 live births, compared to 81 in all developing countries and 11 in developed countries.
Infectious and parasitic diseases account for 14 million deaths per year, around 25 percent of the world total. Six major diseases currently cause 90 percent of the deaths from communicable diseases: AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, and measles. In addition, several parasitic conditions continue to cause considerable morbidity and disability, such as schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and trachoma.
More than 20 million women continue to experience ill health each year as a result of pregnancy. Approximately 500,000 women die as a result of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Nearly 30 percent of the world’s population suffers from one or more of the multiple forms of malnutrition.
In 1999, there were over 1.25 billion smokers in the world, representing one third of the world's population aged 15 and over, the vast majority of whom are in developing countries.
The School of Public Health Responds
There are a number of activities – instructional, research and training – within the School of Public Health that address international health issues, particularly those related to the health status of populations within the developing world. Among the instructional activities are two programs: Health, Environment and Development (HED), an interdisciplinary program that focuses on educating students and scholars from developing countries on ways to achieve health without damaging local and global environments; and the International Health Specialty Area, which prepares students from different disciplines to work in international health programs.
The school is affiliated with a number of research and training groups that focus on health-related issues in the developing world. For example, the school is home to the Fogarty International Emerging Infectious Diseases Training Program, which trains scientists from around the world in methods to combat infectious diseases like meningitis and tuberculosis, while the Fogarty International AIDS Training Program focuses specifically on HIV/AIDS. Other affiliations include the Bay Area International Group (BIG), which works to expand family planning and improve reproductive health in developing countries by using limited resources as effectively as possible. Also, there is the Institute for Global Health, a joint venture between UC Berkeley and UCSF, which seeks to improve health and increase access to effective and affordable health services in all countries.
In addition, many faculty members are conducting studies that are relevant to health status in the developing world. These include such issues as efficient resource allocation, tobacco control, family planning and population studies, environmental pollution, health and human rights, refugee health, health sector reform, vaccine preventable diseases, technology transfer, impact of economic development, demographic changes, and global warming.
