SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Division of Inflammation Medicine, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences; Linköping University:

Postal address: Yrkes- och miljömedicin, Institutionen för klinisk och experimentell medicin (IKE), Hälsouniversitetet, SE-581 85 Linköping
Visiting address: Sandbäcksgatan 7
Web page: http://www.hu.liu.se/ike/forskning/arbets-+och+miljömedicin/

Research and educational activities connected to South Asia:

Dr. Koustuv Dalal (photo to the left) is a M.Sc. in Health Economics originally from Kolkata, India. He has previously connected to the Division of Social Medicine, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. There he received a prestigious research grant together with Dr. Bjarne Jansson, given by the Swedish Research Council. The research project was entitled ”Violence in low-income countries: In search of causes and socio-economic effects”.
In April 2006, Koustuv Dalal won the best scientific paper award of the 8th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, held in Durban, South Africa. It was the largest conference in the field of injury prevention and safety promotion. Koustuv’s paper dealt with cost calculation of violence (injury) in developing countries. Most families in developing countries are dependent on one persons’ income. If that person is injured then the whole family is affected. Considering those conditions, in his model Koustuv has introduced six new variables and negated the traditional concepts of cost calculation of injury, using by several experts including WHO mannual. Koustuv has tested this model in India and shown that the traditional system has under-estimated the cost of injury by about 80%.

In December 2009, after coming to Linköping University, Koustuv Dalal received SEK 600 000 as a three-year International Collaborative Research Grant from the Swedish Research Links programme (funded by Sida and the Swedish Research Council) for a Bangladesh related project, entitled ”Health and Injury Problems among Child Labourers in Bangladesh: a Health Economic study”. See the full list of South Asia related projects given Swedish Research Links grants 2009.
The research project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Centre for Injury Prevention and Research (CIPRB) in Dhaka.
CIPRB focuses on the fact that injuries is a silent epidemic in Bangladesh that steals the lives, hopes and dreams of its victims. Every year 70,000 people die from preventable injury in the country. Of these, 30,000 are children, making injury the leading cause of death among those aged 1 to 17. These injuries include road and traffic accidents, falls, cuts, burns and drowning. Drowning alone claims the lives of 17,000 children each year. Formed in 2005, CIPRB is dedicated to reducing the incidence of injury, death and disability from preventable accidents in low income and developing countries.

Earlier South Asia projects at the department

The Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in Linköping has had a very active scientific collaboration with different institutes in Bangladesh for many years, especially regarding medical effects of high arsenic levels in the drinking water. Earlier, Dr. Martin Tondel worked at the department. By training he is a physician and has been involved in arsenic research, and for that reason he visited Bangladesh. Dr. Tondel left the department in 2007, and is now working at the Dept. of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Sahlgrenska Academy, Göteborg University.

In 1999 a PhD candidate from Bangladesh, Mahfuzar Rahman (photo to the right), defended his thesis entitled ”Nonmalignant Health Effects of Arsenic Exposure”. He is now working at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine still keep close contact with dr Rahman who regularly visits Sweden.

Some of the publications on arsenic research from the Division (more can be found on the home page):

1. Rahman M, Tondel M, Ahmad SA, Axelson O. Diabetes mellitus associated with arsenic exposure in Bangladesh. Am J Epidemiol, 1998;148:198-203.
2. Rahman M, Tondel M, Chowdhury IA, Axelson O. Relations between exposure to arsenic, skin lesions, and glucosuria. Occup Environ Me, 1999;56:277-281.
3. Rahman M, Tondel M, Ahmad SA, Chowdhury IA, Faruquee MH, Axelson O. Hypertension and arsenic exposure in Bangladesh. Hypertension 1999;33:74-78.
4. Tondel M, Rahman M, Magnuson A, Chowdhury IA, Faruquee MH, Ahmad SA. The relationship of arsenic levels in drinking water and the prevalence rate of skin lesions in Bangladesh. Environ Health Perspect 1999;107:727-729.

On one of his frequent visits to the Indian subcontinent, Dr. Tondel also established contacts with the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in New Delhi, India, and he was instrumental in the establishment of a university course in Global Medicine at Linköping University. The courses have been run in collaboration with the Pravara Institute of Medical Sciences in Loni, Maharashtra, India. Dr. Martin Tondel has supervised a large number of Swedish students going on field trips to Loni. More information about the Pravara Institute of Medical Sciences.

Furthermore, Martin Tondel is also actively working with the organisation Svenska Läkare mot Kärnvapen, the Swedish section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). In this capacity Dr. Tondel has visited India and Pakistan several times with International delegations arguing for nuclear disarmament in South Asia.