And the February of 2021 was a monumental one for CHRF. Our Founder and Executive Director, Professor Samir Kumar Saha, was awarded the second highest civilian award, the Ekushey Padak for his contributions to research. Professor Samir Saha said after receiving the award:
“I’m thankful for my struggles because without it, I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength and motivation. It is a true honor and privilege for me to receive the Ekushey Padak, as this award acknowledges me and my team's work to a great extent.”
We take great pride in this accomplishment and continue to be inspired by Professor Samir Saha’s patriotism and perseverance.
After 2020, we went into 2021 still fighting the war with SARS-CoV-2. This time, CHRF started the year off with a Nextstrain build exclusively for Bangladesh. The purpose of this build was to ensure open access for anyone interested to see which variants and variants of concern are circulating in Bangladesh, and was made public in January 2021:
https://nextstrain.org/community/CHRF-Genomics/ncovBangladesh@main
CHRF also continued its science communication efforts to ensure a reliable and scientific public source for queries related to SARS-CoV-2, with a short YouTube series named, 'SARS-CoV-2 Updates in 2 Minutes'.
The year 2021 was also met with the devastating second wave of COVID19 in Bangladesh, and the CHRF staff wanted to help those affected most by the pandemic. During the second wave and a nationwide lockdown, the CHRF family gave up their Bengali New Year allowance to help COVID19 patients in need. From our Executive Director to our porters, everybody donated. With the money raised, 20 oxygen cylinders were donated to a local oxygen bank named Shangjog | Connecting People. A donation drive was also arranged where a week’s worth of groceries were distributed to 100 people whose livelihoods had been severely affected by the lockdown.
We also celebrated the successful rollout of the COVID19 vaccine for our healthcare providers. They were all smiles while getting their shots!
And even after we all got our shots, we continued to have our masks on!
At CHRF, our mission is to prevent infections and save lives, and we have multiple teams hard at work, to beat meningitis and save children. Meningitis does not only kill or disable a child; it paralyzes the entire family. As the CHRF team keeps fighting, we still remember all the lives affected by meningitis during our journey. This number does not only involve the patients, but their families too. In May 2021, CHRF collaborated with Sidrah Foundation, hoping to ease at least a miniscule amount of the suffering of these families. We are grateful for Sidrah Foundation’s generous contribution to the welfare of these families as they provide them with tools such as sewing machines, vans and a wheelchair. Although we know the stories of many such families in need, we have picked seven whose anecdotes we shared on all our social media platforms. This was our first collaboration with Sidrah Foundation and we have many such initiatives coming up! If anyone reading this would like to support a family affected by meningitis, please reach out to Sidrah, and we will make it happen!
CHRF’s sequencing endeavors continued in 2021, stronger than ever before with our NextSeq2000! In June 2021, we had the first ever Illumina NextSeq2000 run in Bangladesh. With our first run, we sequenced 133 bacterial genomes that caused severe infections in children.
And in September, we sequenced 7 phages that we collected from various places in Dhaka! This was extremely exciting for us as growing and purifying bacteriophages was a first for our team, and this might have been the first time Bangladeshi bacteriophages were sequenced on the soil of Bangladesh.
All the while, we also kept sequencing SARS-CoV-2, keeping an eye on variants circulating in Bangladesh, advocating for more groups to start sequencing and applauding those who already are!
On the 15th of September 2021, Bill Gates’ Goalkeepers 2021 published a video on CHRF, having sent a crew to Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF)'s headquarters to film our sequencing team. Dr. Senjuti Saha, a Goalkeeper, talked about Bangladesh's sequencing efforts and what it means as one of the 3 global responses to COVID19. As we’ve seen in 2021, new variants of a disease can emerge over time. In order to develop new tools to fight the disease, we need to identify those variants quickly. Dr. Senjuti Saha is one expert working to sequence SARS-CoV-2.
On the 30th of September 2021, CHRF signed a contract with the government of Bangladesh to construct a world-class and not-for-profit hospital at Bangabandhu Hi-Tech Park. This hospital will also be a part of CHRF's research center with state-of-the-art facilities, also in the same park. From the government of Bangladesh, CHRF received 1 acre of land for the research institute and 1.25 acre for the hospital. We are very excited for the opportunity to provide the best of services to patients with our not-for-profit hospital, train medical doctors and scientists from around the world, and have our research institute be an incubator to generate ideas related to advancing science and healthcare!
On the 23rd of October, 2021, CHRF's Executive Director, Professor Samir Kumar Saha was awarded the 'Pothikrit Biggyan Sommanona' - an annual award initiated by the Pothikrit Foundation, under the sponsorship of Chandrashekhor-Mina Trust Fund. The award has been initiated to honour a Bangladeshi Scientist who has made significant contributions in research and in developing higher level scientific institution(s) in Bangladesh. CHRF's Scientist & Director, Dr. Senjuti Saha, accepted the award on Professor Samir Saha's behalf. We are humbled and grateful for this wonderful initiative to honour scientists in Bangladesh.
On the 12th of November, like every eyar, Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) celebrated World Pneumonia Day 2021. The day was celebrated with diverse activities,and CHRF partnered with a few other organizations also working towards child development. CHRF initiated a two-day (November 13 and 14) program to raise public awareness on prevention of pneumonia.The activities organized by the initiative of CHRF were joined by 5 significant hospitals in the country (including Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute, Dr. MR Khan Shishu Hospital & Insititute of Child Health, Keraniganj Upazila Health Complex, Kumudini Women's Medical College & Hospital) and 1 Upazila Complex (Mirzapur), where awareness camps were set up.
7th December 2007 was the day CHRF was founded. 14 years later, on the 7th of December, 2021, the CHRF family celebrated this monumental day for the first time. The multidisciplinary staff from four hospitals (Bangladesh Shishu Hospital & Institute, Dr. MR Khan Shishu Hospital, Chittagong Ma-O-Shishu Hospital, and Kumudini Women’s Medical College) and five microbiology laboratories around the country, ended their workday with this joyful event. Here’s to keeping up the fight for Science and Advocacy! Henceforth, the 7th of December will be celebrated annually as ‘CHRF Day’!
On the 28th of December 2021, the Anannya Shirsha Award 2020 was awarded to 10 women for their outstanding contribution to their respective fields. CHRF's very own Director and Scientist, Dr. Senjuti Saha, was one of the awardees, under the category of Science. We are grateful to Anannya Magazine -অনন্যা , a fortnightly magazine, for their fight to break stereotypes and empower women with this award since 1993. There may be 10 women who won the award, but their stories will inspire 1000s.
CHRF secured the Pediatric Human Cell Atlas Grant in 2021, which will help Bangladesh contribute to the global effort to understand the molecular characteristics of normal cells from children's tissues, and how these cells and tissues change over time. CHRF also released an open-access & easy-to-use tool in 2021 named, ‘Paratype’, to support Salmonella Paratyphi A sequencing efforts. The tool segregates Paratyphi A into distinct clades and was built for use by public health researchers to track Paratyphi A infections & help guide evidence-based policy decisions. CHRF published 40 peer-reviewed journal articles in 2021 and had many new members join the CHRF family! With our hearts full, we walk towards 2022 with hope for the future, and a drive to do more for Bangladesh, in Bangladesh, with Bangladesh.