"Our research shows that when air pollution increases, more children are born with low weight or prematurely," says Mahin Al Nahian, who researches climate change and health.

Published 27 March in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the study notes that many children, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, suffer from multiple bouts of diarrhoea during the first year of life, despite improvements in toilet facilities, clean water access, immunisation services and exclusive breastfeeding.

A new study published in The Journal of Climate Change and Health found that mothers exposed to high levels of air pollution during pregnancy had a higher rate of low birth weight in 3,206 babies born in Dhaka between 2014 and 2017.

Post-coronavirus has more physical effects on women than men, particularly creating respiratory and cardiovascular complications in the following weeks, according to a recent study conducted by a Bangladeshi research organization. The study, titled "Features and risk factors of post-COVID-19 syndrome: Findings from a longitudinal study in Bangladesh," is the first of its kind in Asia, and found that COVID-19 long-term effects differ between men and women.

Three years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The virus had spread across the globe, and the WHO announcement triggered unprecedented measures – governments ordered people to quarantine, borders closed and mandatory masking became commonplace.

When Dr. Firdausi Qadri thinks about the number of cases of cholera in the world today—that ancient disease that still kills tens of thousands each year—she's frustrated. "It's a disgrace that we see so much cholera today, including in countries that haven't had the disease for many years," she says. Qadri has studied and fought the scourge for much of her decades-long career with the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b for short).

More than three years since the start of the COVID pandemic, infectious disease experts are studying other viruses with pandemic potential. Their goal is to understand how pandemics begin and how they can be prevented. This is the focus of the NPR series "Hidden Viruses: How Pandemics Really Begin." In this episode, NPR's Ari Daniel takes us to Bangladesh, where researchers studied a dangerous virus called "Nipah" and how it spreads.

Outbreaks seemed to come out of nowhere. The disease would spread quickly and then disappear as suddenly as it came. With the Nipah virus came encephalitis — swelling of the brain — and its symptoms: fever, headache and sometimes even coma. The patients also often suffered from respiratory disease, leading to coughing, vomiting and difficulty breathing.

"Nipah is terrifying, unusually terrifying," says Dr. Stephen Luby, currently a professor of medicine at Stanford University, who was in charge of the outbreak investigation for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). He says it's terrifying, in part, because the virus is so deadly in people. Also, the outbreaks are tightly clustered. "And so the people who are sick know each other," he says. "And because of this, it is a clear community crisis."

El estudio nuevo de vacuna oral contra polio, participado y financiado por la Fundación de Bill&Melinda Gates fue desarrollado por los científicos de Bangladés y fue ejecutado por el Centro Internacional de Investigación de Diarrea de Bangladés ICDDR,B, los Centro de Control y Prevención de Enfermedades de los EEUU CDC y el Instituto Internacional de Vacuna en Seúl bajo una coordinación.

In a new study conducted in rural Bangladesh, researchers found that areas with high levels of groundwater arsenic contamination that children drink regularly have a greater prevalence of antibiotic resistance compared to areas with lower contamination levels.

In a study run between 2013 and 2015, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh (ICCDRB) concluded that many pregnant women in the country had been consuming “excessive amounts” of the spice in the hope of boosting their health, with 31 per cent of those surveyed found to have “dangerous levels” of lead in their blood.

The International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh hospital, where the cholera treatment was pioneered and which played a key role in the development of the vaccine, saw a record number of cholera patients in March and April this year.

The best treatment for childhood malnutrition might seem obvious: more, and more nutritious, food. And the standard approach is indeed just that. Over the years, formulae for ready-to-use supplementary food (rusf)—bars and packets of paste intended for moderate cases and made from rice, lentils, sugar, soya oil and milk powder—and similar therapeutic food (rutf), a nut-based treatment for more severe instances, have been developed. These work. But Tahmeed Ahmed, executive director of the awkwardly named icddr,b, a research institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and his team think they have come up with something better.

Nuhu amin is a medical researcher at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh. Later this month one of his colleagues will dig into a pit latrine in Cox’s Bazar, a refugee settlement in Bangladesh where 900,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims live. A sample will be extracted, refrigerated, and sent on a 12-hour bus journey to a laboratory in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.

A study conducted by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) found the sub-variant BA.5 is spreading rapidly in the country.

Dr. Firdausi Qadri is a Bangladeshi scientist specializing in infectious diseases such as cholera. In 2021 she was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Asian Nobel Prize, for her work.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the initiative, I am confident that our efforts in testing newer tools for vector surveillance and pathogen detection will eventually help save lives in Europe and elsewhere,” says Dr Mohammad Shafiul Alam, Scientist at icddr,b (formerly International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh).

New research cautions that such a radical attempt to cool the planet, often touted as a win for health, may push up the malaria risk in some countries, even if it decreases disease transmission elsewhere.

SCIENTISTS CONDUCTED PIONEERING RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND HOW SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT (SRM) GEOENGINEERING COULD AFFECT SOME OF THE WORLD’S POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE REGIONS.