David Nalin
| David R. Nalin (was born David R. Naliboff) | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 22, 1941 New York, New York |
| Residence | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Institutions | International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh |
| Alma mater | Albany Medical College |
| Known for | Oral rehydration therapy, |
| Notable awards | the Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research, the Mahidol Medal, from His Royal Highness the King of Thailand |
David R. Nalin (born April 21, 1941) is an American physiologist, and Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research and Prince Mahidol Award, a.k.a. Mahidol Medal winner. Nalin had the key insight that Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) would work if the volume of solution patients drank matched the volume of their fluid losses, and that this would drastically reduce or completely replace the only current treatment for cholera, intravenous therapy. Nalin led the trials that first demonstrated ORT works, both in cholera patients, and more significantly, also in other dehydrating diarrhea illnesses. Nalin's discoveries have been estimated to have saved over 50 million lives worldwide.
In the fall of 1968, Dr. David Nalin, at a young 26 years of age and having completed only his first year of medical residency, was working in Dacca, Bangladesh at the Pakistan-SEATO Cholera Research Lab when a cholera epidemic broke out near Chittagong, along the eastern Burmese border. Until the discovery of ORT, the only efficient means of rehydrating a patient suffering from serious dehydration was to provide fluids intravenously. For the vast majority of people in the developing world, cholera or any severe diarrhea illness was too often a death sentence since people infected usually had no recourse due to the cost and inaccessibility of IV therapy. Nalin realized that ORT treatment could completely replace IV treatment and could work for most diarrhea, not only that caused by cholera. Nalin and his colleague, Richard A. Cash, working in an adverse research climate, working in a tent housing patient overflow, at a small missionary hospital carved out of the jungle, fought to perform scientific trials that would prove Oral rehydration therapy would work. UNICEF released a special report in 1987 regarding Oral Rehydration Therapy. It said “No other single medical breakthrough of the 20th century has had the potential to prevent so many deaths over such a short period of time and at so little cost”
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