Dilip Mahalanabis

Mahalanabis was married to Jayanti Mahalanabis. He died at a private hospital in West Bengal, Kolkata on 16 October 2022, at the age of 87. He was suffering from lung infection and other old age related ailments.

In 1994, Mahalanabis was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2002 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Nathaniel Pierce, Dr. David Nalin and Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn, were awarded the first Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research for their contributions to the discovery and implementation of oral rehydration therapy. In 2006 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Richard A. Cash and Dr. David Nalin were awarded the Prince Mahidol Prize, also for their role in the development and application of oral rehydration therapy.

In 1990 he was appointed as a clinical research officer at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B), Bangladesh. Later going on to become the Director of Clinical Research there. In 2004, he and Dr. Nathaniel Pierce were working on an improved version of the ORS which would be more effective at preventing dehydration from all forms diarrhoea and confer addition benefits like reduced stool output.

In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, he was a medical officer in the Diarrheal Disease Control Programme of the WHO.

From 1975 to 1979, Mahalanabis worked in cholera control for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Afghanistan, Egypt and Yemen. During the 1980s, he worked as a WHO consultant on research on the management of bacterial diseases. In 1983, Mahalanabis was made a member of the WHO’s Diarrhoeal Diseases Control Programme. He remained in that role for over five years. He was also associated with Kolkata's National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) and the Institute of Child Health.

He worked in the cholera control unit of the WHO from 1975-79, serving in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Yemen. He worked as a consultant on bacterial diseases for the WHO during the 1980s.

While he was in the UK he became the first Indian to be selected as the registrar for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. In the 1960s he joined the Johns Hopkins University International Centre for Medical Research and Training (JH-CMRT) in Kolkata, where he began his research into oral rehydration therapy.

Dilip Mahalanabis (12 November 1934 – 16 October 2022) was an Indian paediatrician known for pioneering the use of oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrhoeal diseases. Mahalanabis had begun researching oral rehydration therapy in 1966 as a research investigator for the Johns Hopkins University International Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta, India. During the Bangladeshi war for independence, he led the effort by the Johns Hopkins Center that demonstrated the dramatic life-saving effectiveness of oral rehydration therapy when cholera broke out in 1971 among refugees from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) who had sought asylum in West Bengal. The simple, inexpensive Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) gained acceptance, and was later hailed as one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century.

Dilip Mahalanabis was born on November 12 1934 in Kishoreganj district of Bengal Province of British India. He graduated from the Calcutta Medical College as a paediatrician in 1958 after working there as an intern. The establishment of the NHS in UK provided him an opportunity to pursue medicine in the UK, he obtained degrees from London and Edinburgh.