Samir K. Saha

Throughout my career, my passion has been working with limited resources and gradually building capacities. Starting from a setting with almost no microbiological facilities, I have developed a state-of-the-art setup, and formed a multi­disciplinary research team of more than 250 members. In 2007, I founded Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF), a research initiative in collaboration with the department of Microbiology, Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Bangladesh. The core mission of CHRF is to improve child health in Bangladesh and the regions, by facilitating appropriate policy decisions on treatment and preventions through research and advocacy. My team has led and leads multiple projects including the large multi-­­country community based project on Aetiology of Neonatal Infection in South Asia (ANISA). My research projects also include clinical trials, surveillances for invasive bacterial diseases at hospitals and population based sites, and measurement of impact of vaccines. Of note, we led multiple clinical trials on short course antibiotic therapies to rationalize the use of antibiotic for pneumonia and meningitis. Under my leadership, the team generated evidence and facilitated the decision-making process of introducing Hib and pneumococcal vaccines in Bangladesh. As the follow up of vaccine introduction, we are now working to measure the vaccine impact to generate further evidence for policy-­makers. The model I have established is one that generates evidence and data efficiently using minimum resources, and then building larger number of collaborations and attracting additional resources. All in all, over the last two decades, our setting has become a sustainable model for conducting high-­­quality research on infectious diseases in low-resource settings. I have authored more than 200 papers that reflecting my research interest.