Associate Scientist and Project Coordinator
icddr,b, Bangladesh
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
I, Dr. Fahmida Chowdhury (MBBS, MPH) is a medical epidemiologist and works as an Associate Scientist under the Programme for Emerging Infections of Infectious Diseases Division (IDD) of icddr,b. I am leading two research groups: 1. the Respiratory Viruses Research Group and 2. Infection Control and AMR Research Group of icddr,b. I have been involved in research on infectious diseases in Bangladesh since 2009. I started my career as a clinician in pediatrics in 2001 and developed keen interest in infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. I worked in the area of management and prevention of childhood malnutrition, diarrheal diseases and infectious illnesses including TB, other acute respiratory infections and AMR for the last 23 years. Till date, I conducted twenty epidemiological studies as principal investigator (PI) and seventeen studies as Co-PI or Co-I which includes hospital and community based-surveillance, clinical trial, cohort, case-control, cross-sectional and health economics studies. I am leading the hospital-based influenza surveillance, surveillance on acute febrile illness, Pneumococcal disease, fungal disease in Bangladesh as principal investigator in collaboration with Bangladesh Ministry of Health. I conducted research and also national survey on antimicrobial use in both human and animal sector using one health approach among community population, hospitalized patients, pharmacies, poultry and aquaculture. I am also leading studies to detect the prevalence of Candida auris in ICUs and communities and a multi-country study to estimate the population-based prevalence and risk factors of multidrug resistant organisms in health community individuals and hospital admitted patients in Bangladesh including a birth cohort study to detect the AMR burden among pregnant women and their new born infants up to one year of their age.