Pakistani Pediatrician Receives [Million Dollar Grant]

2023 Author: Abraham Higgins | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 23:16

Pakistani Pediatrician Receives [Million Dollar Grant]

Anita Zaidi, a pediatrician from Pakistan, received a $ 1 million grant to fight infant and child mortality in a village in the south of the country, becoming the first recipient of The Caplow Children's Prize, established in January 2013 by American engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Caplow.

Anita Zaidi. Photo from the site pbs.org /

Pakistani pediatrician Anita Zaidi received a $ 1 million grant to fight infant and child mortality in a village in the south of the country, becoming the first recipient of The Caplow Children's Prize, according to the award's official website.

The award was established in January 2013 by Ted Caplow, an American engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, with the goal of “saving the maximum million dollar lives possible,” according to the award's website. Grant applicants, who can be people from anywhere in the world, are invited to submit to the award jury an effective and cost-effective plan online, from which it should be clear how exactly the money will be spent and how many children who would otherwise die before living up to five years, thanks to these investments, it will be possible to save.

Anita Zaidi, who heads the Department of Pediatrics at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, has won the award among 550 other projects from 70 countries. Zaidi's plan aims to reduce infant and child mortality in the fishing village of Reri Goth near Karachi. In this village, before the age of five, 106 out of every thousand born children die, which is almost double the average child mortality rate in the world, which according to UNICEF in 2011 is 51 per thousand.

Women in this region, which is home to about 40 thousand people, as a rule, do not have access to medical care during pregnancy, there is no hospital and people with no medical education usually take part in childbirth, Zaidi said in her video application. In the event of complications in childbirth, the child dies before the mother can help.

Zaidi has been working in the area on various health-related projects for the past ten years and is well aware of the situation from the inside. She plans to spend the grant on improving nutrition for pregnant women, women in labor and their babies, organizing primary medical examination of newborns and their vaccination, as well as training a group of local women in obstetrics. Pregnant women will undergo medical examinations at least twice, they are planned to be given multivitamins and, in case they are malnourished, food.