A $2.8-million grant has been awarded to an interdisciplinary team of researchers from UBC’s, Child & Family Research Institute and BC Children’s Hospital. The Canadian International Development Agency grant will help researchers to improve the survival rate of Bangladeshi mothers, newborns, and young children. The team aims to do this through the prevention of sepsis. Sepsis is a severe illness in which bacteria cause a blood infection, which can be fatal. Those who survive often continue to suffer, and many die from complications after leaving the hospital.
Dr. Guy Dumont, from Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC, is part of the team involved in this world health initiative. His research area is in biomedical technologies, including biomedical signal processing and automatic drug delivery. The other members of the team include researchers from the UBC Department of Anesthesia, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Science, Department of Family Practice and Division of Midwifery, and the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. The project is led by Dr. Charles Larson, a clinical professor in pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine and associate member of the School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) at UBC.