This week I had the pleasure of visiting one of the two major research sites of our Sonamoni project. Sonamoni is jointly coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, Design Without Borders (DWB) in Uganda, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). We are working to reduce drownings among newly-mobile children, generally those under two years old. This £1.6m project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. Yesterday CIPRB staff Prof. Dr. Aminur Rahman and Mr. Notan Chandra Dutta took me to the field site in Kalapari in rural Bangladesh.
This was my first ever visit to Bangladesh despite earlier attempts to go out there two and three decades ago. This visit included an outdoor meeting with a Village Injury Prevention Committee (VIPC) with whom CIPRB has been working for years.
The Bournemouth University team comprises staff from three faculties: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and Ph.D. student Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossain. For more information about our ongoing research in Bangladesh, please visit the NIHR website.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)