Dr. Hasnain Ahmed · MBBS, FCGP, MPH (Epidemiology)
Born where the road ends. Working so help doesn't.
A public health physician and Health Officer at UNICEF Bangladesh, leading national work on lead poisoning, climate and health, and health emergencies. One goal runs through all of it: a child's birthplace should never decide whether that child gets care.
Government of Bangladesh, MoHFW and DGHS
He grew up in a coastal district that rivers and sea had cut off from the rest of Bangladesh. There was no road out. Floods came without warning. Cyclones redrew villages overnight. Mothers and children died. The medicine existed. It just couldn't get there. He has spent every year since [closing that distance.]
02 Four results from a decade of public health work in Bangladesh
66% to 95% full vaccination coverage in two years. From 63rd in the country to 1st.
Blood samples in Bangladesh's first nationally representative survey of child lead exposure.
Health workers trained to treat heat illness, in a programme adopted as the national framework.
Health facilities restored after the Eastern Floods, with 106,000+ consultations delivered.
Seven chapters. Each one moved him a step further from treating a single patient and a step closer to fixing why patients get sick.
He trained to treat one patient at a time. The wards taught him what textbooks skip: by the time a child reaches the bed, the real story started long before.
Maternal, child and immunization programmes in remote coastal areas. Public health learned from the ground, not from a policy paper.
A short posting with a long reach: asking whether care across a whole division was actually good, not just available.
Cox's Bazar during the Rohingya influx: early warning systems and the world's largest oral cholera vaccine campaign. Then Bhola, from 63rd to 1st.
A brief role bringing a physician's view to legal aid and rights work, before UNICEF called.
Maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and climate resilience in one of the most climate-exposed divisions in the country.
Three pillars, one country: Environmental Health, Climate Change and Health, and Health Emergency Preparedness and Response. Working with DGHS, ministries and partners.
“The question was never how to treat one sick child. It was [why so many children get sick] in the first place.”
05 The work at UNICEF Bangladesh, where evidence becomes national policy
Bangladesh had no national lead strategy, no coordination and no lab capacity for heavy metals. Millions of children were being harmed and almost nobody was looking. He made the country look.
He led the work that wrote health and nutrition into Bangladesh's third NDC to the UNFCCC. For the first time, the country's climate commitments named public health.
Cholera in the camps. COVID-19. The largest dengue outbreak on record. Cyclones, floods and measles. When the system is under the most strain, he is in the room that keeps it standing.
06 Ministries, classrooms, villages and homes
07 Degrees, national policy and research
Open to collaborations, advisory and technical roles, speaking, and research partnerships on environmental health, climate and health, and emergency preparedness.
sbmc.hasnain@gmail.com
