Alfred Sommer
| Alfred Sommer | |
|---|---|
Alfred Sommer
|
|
| Born |
2 October 1942 New York, New York, USA |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields |
Ophthalmology Epidemiology International Health |
| Alma mater |
Union College (B.S., 1963) Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1967) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (M.H.S., 1973) |
| Known for |
Vitamin A deficiency Blindness prevention |
| Notable awards |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fries Prize for Improving Health (2008) American Academy of Ophthalmology Laureate (2011) Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research (2005) National Academy of Sciences (2001) Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (1997) National Academy of Medicine (1992) |
Alfred (Al) Sommer is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and, recently, the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.
Sommer was born on October 2, 1942 in New York City. He attended Union College in Schenectady, New York and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1963. At Union College, Sommer chose majored in both biology and history. Sommer attended Harvard Medical School and obtained his M.D. in 1967. He later served as a medical intern and resident at Harvard University’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (formerly Beth Israel Hospital) from 1967 to 1969.
To avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War, Sommer joined the Public Health Service and began working in the Cholera Research Laboratory. While working as part of the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka, Bangladesh (known as East Pakistan at the time), Sommer and his research affiliates develop and conducted a study testing the effect of supplementing newborns with 50000 IU of vitamin A on all-cause infant mortality through 24 weeks of age. The trials themselves spanned across 19 rural unions in northwest, present-day Bangladesh and were double-masked, cluster-randomized, community-based, and placebo-controlled. The primary purpose of this study was to observe the corresponding childhood mortality rates through 24 weeks of age, and the results indicated that supplementation of 5000 IU of vitamin A to the newborns significantly improved the survival of infants through the first 6 months of life. 15,902 infants were actually dosed in the study (Sommer's group actually obtained maternal consent to dose 17,116 infants), and the mortality risk of infants that were dosed with vitamin A was .85 in comparison to the subjects who served as the control. This quantitative determination signified a 15% decrease in all-cause mortality of the infants in rural Bangladesh.
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