Includes maternal health study in North Bengal will attempt to confirm previous findings that have shown vitamin A supplementation at normal dietary levels can significantly reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. Akhter serves as co-principal investigator on the study with Keith West, DrPH '87, MPH '79, professor, International Health. Two decades ago, the two were classmates at Hopkins. Since then, Akhter has become a respected Bangladeshi scientist, serving as director of the Bangladesh Institute of Research for Promotion of Essential & Reproductive Health and Technologies, which she founded more than a decade ago.

The effort, funded largely by USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Canadian government, presents a daunting task. In a remote district of 900 square kilometers traversed mainly by paths and primitive country roads, she will induct a platoon of 800 health care workers (most of them local women) in 56 teams. Each month they will go house to house throughout the region's 600 villages offering free pregnancy tests to women who have missed a menstrual period.

The goal is to enroll at least 18,000 newly pregnant women per year in the study. Those who enroll will be supplemented with vitamin A every week for the duration of their pregnancy and three months postpartum. If the study results duplicate a similar investigation completed recently in Nepal, the vitamin A supplementation will lead to significantly better health outcomes among the pregnant women.

maternal health, Reproductive Health

Halida Hanum Akhter is former director of the Bangladesh Institute of Research for Promotion of Essential and Reproductive Health and Technologies in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and current managing director of Health Promotion Limited. Dr. Akhter holds numerous professional affiliations in the areas of family planning, maternal and child health, and population research. Her career has included positions with the Ford Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Bank. A medical graduate from Dhaka Medical College, Dr. Akhter received her MCPS in Obstetrics and Gynecology from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She earned her MPH and PhD from Johns Hopkins University.