Prof Digambar Behera of India received the Karel Styblo Award for Public Health and Dr Rod Escombe of the United Kingdom was awarded the Union Scientific Prize at the 40th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Cancún, Mexico on 4 December 2009.

Union awards honour contributions in the field of tuberculosis

Prof Digambar Behera, an Indian chest physician who helped persuade his colleagues to support the guidelines of India’s Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme in the 1990s, and Dr Rod Escombe, a young researcher who has studied the impact of natural ventilation on TB transmission, received the 2009 Union Awards on 4 December 2009 at the 40th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Cancún, Mexico.

Prof Behera of New Delhi received the Karel Styblo Award for Public Health, which acknowledges a health worker (physician or lay person) or a community organisation for contributions to tuberculosis control or non-tuberculous lung disease over a period of 10 years.

Prof Behera has been active in patient care, research, teaching and advocating for lung health for more than 30 years. He is currently the Director of the LRS Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, New Delhi and a professor in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research there. Under his leadership, the Institute conducted pilot-tests of DOTS-Plus that were subsequently the basis for countrywide DOTS Plus. As a National Reference Laboratory, the Institute is testing the FIND-supported MGIT system for rapid liquid cultures and DST testing and has procured a molecular research lab capable of creating a genetic fingerprinting data base of Mycobacteria for this region.

Prof Behera has done extensive research in tuberculosis and other areas of lung health, including lung cancer and played an important role in convincing medical college faculty, academics and chest physicians to endorse the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program guidelines for treatment of tuberculosis. He has more than 280 scientific publications and is author of the text book Pulmonary Medicine. He is the country Governor of India for the American College of Chest Physicians and assumed the position of Chair of The Union’s Tuberculosis Scientific Section at the World Conference.

Dr Rod Escombe MD DTM&H PhD of the United Kingdom was awarded the 2009 Union Scientific Prize, which acknowledges a researcher under 45 years of age for work on tuberculosis or non-tuberculous disease published in the past five years.

Dr Escombe studied medicine at Cambridge University and Charing Cross & Westminster Medical School in London, qualifying as a doctor in 1995. After training in infectious diseases in London, he went to Peru in 2002 to conduct research into TB transmission and its prevention.

There he re-created classic 1950s studies of airborne TB transmission, where guinea pigs breathed air from a TB ward and was able to investigate determinants of TB infectiousness, as well as the use of upper-room ultraviolet lights for preventing nosocomial TB transmission. In parallel he studied natural ventilation for airborne infection control in health care settings.

He received the award based on papers published in PLoS Medicine on natural ventilation for the prevention of airborne contagion, upper room UV light for prevention of nosocomial TB transmission and the infectiousness of TB patients coinfected with HIV.

Unlike many researchers, he has forged links outside the normal disciplines associated with medical researchers. His work brings architects and engineers into the public health arena and in doing so taps into resources rarely used for tuberculosis control. Dr Escombe is currently completing his medical training in London and plans to return to Peru to continue his studies into TB infection control.

“The Union Awards are an important opportunity to highlight the outstanding work being carried out by the TB community”, said Dr Nils E Billo, Executive Director of The Union. “The Union is delighted to acknowledge the work of Prof Behera and Dr Escombe this year”.

See more pictures on the Slideshow here.