Dilip Mahalanabis who saved millions of lives with ORS passes away

KOLKATA: Dilip Mahalanabis, a doctor who became world famous for creating Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) that saved millions of lives of refugees during the 1971 Liberation War, passed away at a private hospital early Sunday. He was 87.

The member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was admitted to Apollo Gleneagles Hospital at EM Bypass in Kolkata two weeks ago with old-age related ailments. He was later diagnosed with lung infection.

At around 2.50 am on Sunday, the noted pediatrician-turned-clinical scientist died. Born on November 12 in 1934, Dr Mahalanabis graduated from Calcutta Medical College and Hospital in 1958 and started his practice in paediatrics.

He joined the National Health Service in London two years later and did his MRCP. Dr Mahalanabis later joined Johns Hopkins University, which had an international centre at Beliaghata ID Hospital in Kolkata for the cholera treatment.

In 1964, Dr Mahalanabis returned to India and started his research on oral rehydration therapy, consisting of a mixture of table salt, baking soda and commercial glucose to treat diarrheal diseases.

In 1971 when the Bangladesh Liberation War broke out, millions of refugees fled from former East Pakistan and took shelter in various camps in West Bengal. An outbreak of Cholera infected many of them, Dr Mahalanabis along with his staff used the ORT which not only reduced the death rate among the refugees but also curbed the spread of the disease.

The ORT later came to be known as ORS globally with the publication of his work in Johns Hopkins Medical Journal and Lancet. Between 1980s and 1990s, Dr Mahalanabis worked as a medical officer in the Diarrheal Disease Control Programme of the World Health Organization, Geneva. In 1990, he established the Society for Applied Studies in West Bengal.