The First Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research, administered by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is awarded to four scientists who made revolutionary contributions to the discovery and implementation of Oral Rehydration and Maintenance Therapy (ORT) in the 1960s and early 1970s in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and India. Recipients are Dilip Mahalanabis, MBBS, Norbert Hirschhorn, M.D, Nathaniel F. Pierce, III, M.D, David Nalin M.D (see attached biographies)

The prize will be presented Friday, November 15, 2002, at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Milstein Hospital Building, following a Symposium on "History of Oral Rehydration Therapy."

Until the discovery of ORT, the only efficient means of rehydrating a child or adult suffering from serious dehydration was to provide fluids intravenously. For the vast majority of people in the developing world, cholera or severe diarrheal illness was often a death sentence since people infected with these illnesses usually had no recourse due to the cost and inaccessibility of intravenous therapy. Diarrheal dehydration killed in excess of five million children per year.

Since the adoption of this inexpensive and easily applied intervention, the worldwide mortality rate for children with acute infectious diarrhea has decreased from 5 million to about 1.3 million deaths per year. It is estimated that the lives of forty million patients have been saved in the past 30 years by the implementation of this treatment.

The Pollin Prize honors the work of these physicians and their colleagues whose research was in the greatest tradition of controlled investigation and application of fundamental scientific insights to a widespread public health problem of lethal consequence.

First Pollin Prize Recipient Biographies

Dilip Mahalanabis, MBBS - As a pediatrician working with the Calcutta Cholera team, he organized and applied exclusive oral Rehydration to adults and children in refugee camps during the Bangladesh War of Independence. Many lives were saved, and the efficacy of ORT under the most adverse clinical circumstances was proved. This was the first use of ORT in emergency situations that required the administration of resuscitation fluids by family members rather than medically trained personnel, and for that reason was the first demonstration of the broad application of this life-saving technique.

Norbert Hirschhorn, M.D.

Came to the Pakistan SEATO Cholera Research Laboratory in Dacca, East Pakistan in 1965 and tested the efficacy of intragoatric administration of a glucose and salt solution with the water balance studies on eight cholera patients admitted in shock. He showed that glucose was critical to reducing stool output in these circumstances.

Nathaniel F. Pierce, III, M.D.

Working in 1967 at the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta, India, Pierce and his associates simultaneously conducted water and electrolyte balance studies that included variable rates of intragastric infusion of solutions of varying concentrations of glucose and sodium. These studies provided experimental support for the efficacy of enteric resuscitation of life-threatening diarrheal illness.

David Nalin M.D.

At age 26, having completed only one year of medical residency, Dr. Nalin was sent to Dacca, East Pakistan under the auspices of the International Research Office of the NIH. In 1968 he and his associate, Richard Cash, M.D., tested a medical replacement protocol that used exclusive oral replacement of measured enteric fluid loss. This protocol, applied in the cholera Research Laboratory Hospital in Dacca, constituted the first successful oral fluid and electrolyte resuscitation in cholera patients. In the fall of 1968 this protocol was used successfully in the field in Matlab Bazaar, East Pakistan, and was subsequently shown to be effective in non-cholera diarrhea, and in children.

The Pollin Prize

Created by Irene and Abe Pollin and their family of Chevy Chase, Maryland. The prize is funded by the Linda and Kenneth Pollin Foundation and administered by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The Pollin families, prominent philanthropists, are perhaps best known as the co-owners of the Washington Wizards basketball team. Irene Pollin, a psychiatric social worker and lecturer in the department of psychiatry at Harvard University, created Medical Crisis Counseling and has written several books and articles on crisis counseling and the emotional management of long-term illness. As president and founder of the Linda and Kenneth Pollin Foundation, she serves on a number of national advisory boards and commissions in the field of mental health and womenâs health, and is a co-founder and chairperson of the Sister to Sister-Everyone Has a Heart Foundation, an organization whose aim is to increase womenâs awareness of heart disease and provide free cardiac screenings.