Dr. David R. Nalin

Dr. David R. Nalin MD

USA
2006 in Public Health


David R. Nalin, MD. Is the former Director of Vaccine Scientific Affairs. Merck Vaccine Division, Merck&Co. Inc., West Point, Pensylvania, U.S.A. Dr. David R. Nalin, was assigned, in the 1960s, to the Pakistan-SEATO Cholera Research
Laboratory (CRL) in Dhaka, East Pakistan (presently, the capital city of Bangladesh) as a research associate at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr Nalin, Dr Richard Cash, and their colleagues successfully tested the efficacy of an oral glucose-electrolyte solution, later known as oral rehydration therapy (ORT), to be used instead of intravenous fluid for the treatment of patients with severe cholera. This new treatment was tested in Matlab and then used by the Johns Hopkins University International Center for Medical Research and Training (ICMRT) in Calcutta in the refugee camps during the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. Later as a WHO consultant, Dr Nalin has helped establish a number of highly successful national programs on the oral rehydration therapy for diarrhea diseases in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Jordan, and Pakistan.