The Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) was initiated by a group of child health researchers of Bangladesh, working through research and educational efforts to facilitate the decision making on appropriate child health policy.
CHRF has established collaboration with different national and international organizations like USAID, WHO, Johns Hopkins University, ICDDR,B International Vaccine Institute (IVI), Novartis Vaccine Institute of Global Health and others. CHRF dreams to contribute to reducing child mortality by creating awareness for appropriate care and care-seeking, ensuring rational treatments, and evidence-based preventive programs.
The idea for setting up CHRF came from the realization of the founding group of researchers that developing countries like Bangladesh often lack the evidence needed for rational and timely policy decisions due to an inadequate and improper use of limited resources.
The scarcity of evidence, in turn, discourages the investment in child health. CHRF works to make sure that evidence about disease burden and causes is generated through high-quality research conducted using limited resources. In addition to research, CHRF also works with other non-profit hospitals to facilitate low-cost diagnostic services for poor patients to improve child health while simultaneously collective valuable evidence for policy designs. Through an association with the Department of Microbiology at Dhaka Shishu Hospital and through a consortium of urban and rural hospitals, CHRF has access to research facilities that enables it to contribute to scientific and medical knowledge and their applications in South Asia to improve public health approaches.
Through these activities, CHRF aims to break the vicious cycle that limits the potential of limited resources and convert it to a virtuous cycle by making appropriate use of limited resources, produce evidence, facilitate evidence-based policy decisions, shorten the time lag between evidence and implementation and generate interest for increased and sustained investments in child health. Finally, CHRF works to contribute to reducing child mortality by creating awareness and advocating for appropriate care and care-seeking behavior, ensuring rational treatments, and evidence-based preventive programs.
The mission of Child Health Research Foundation is to improve child health in Bangladesh and around the world by facilitating appropriate policy decisions through research and advocacy.
Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) is non-profit, non-Government organization registered under the Society Registration Act 1860, vide registration number S-7289(478) at 2007. Child Health Research Foundation is also registered under the Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) Regulations Act 2016 vide registration number 3183 on 26 December 2018 from the NGO Affairs Bureau.
A small microbiology laboratory in the “corridor” of Dhaka Shishu Hospital teamed up with a group of bold and driven clinical colleagues
We started generating evidence on Hib and pneumococcal diseases in Bangladesh
Keeping our umbilical connection intact with Dhaka Shishu Hospital, we founded Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) to focus on research in addition to serving the patients.
Our research helped to facilitate Hib vaccine in Bangladesh. Additionally, we started one of the largest studies (ANISA) in South Asia on childhood infections in the following year.
Surveillance data from our research was used to facilitate decision-making regarding selection of the most appropriate pneumococcal vaccines (PCV10), which encouraged other countries in the South Asia
We got our first sequencer and started sequencing common pathogens in Bangladesh
We were the first to sequence the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in Bangladesh, and the first non-government lab to start COVID19 testing.
We are building a Bangladesh Pediatric Disease Observatory and detecting mysterious diseases using metagenomics
The massive development from a small table to a huge laboratory with the latest technologies at finger tips would not be possible without the generous support from the friends in the society and research collaborators at home and abroad.
