Coluthur Gopalan (1918–2019

“NIN today bears testimony to his genius as an architect and father of nutrition sciences in India. Research under his leadership formed the basis of major national nutrition programs initiated in the 1970s – ICDS, Massive Dose Vitamin A and Iron Supplementation,” commented Dr R Hemalatha, Director, NIN.

“Dr Gopalan was a visionary institution builder. He viewed medical and nutrition science fom a holistic perspective and always wanted to address them taking a multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach. His contributions to medical science in general and nutrition science in particular are immense. He, in fact, brought nutrition to center stage and was instrumental in putting it as an important driver in the developmental plans and policies of the country,” said Dr Balram Bhargava, Director General of ICMR. Reprinted fom India Science Wire with permission.

Dr Gopalan was conferred with the frst FANS Living Legend

Award by the Federation of Asian Nutrition Societies (FANS)

during the 13 th Asian Congress of Nutrition in Bali in August

2019. Dr Gopalan was a founding member of FANS and continued as an honorary executive member until his decease.

His colleagues Al Sommer and Keith West remember him: Before there was a WHO* (1948), UNICEF (1946), ICNND (1955), NIN (1958), USAID (1961) and DHS (1984); before there were DRIs (1997), and methods of HPLC (1967) and AAS (1955) to assess nutrients; before the synergy of nutrition and infection was published by Scrimshaw, Taylor and Gordon (1959 and 1968); before the emergence of nutritional epidemiology as a discipline (1960s); before there was a Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins (1961) or even an independent India itself (1947), there were the observations, insights and writings of Dr CG Gopalan, physician and nutritionist, addressing the plight of India’s malnourished. May he rest in peace, and his mission carry on. *Abbreviations in order of appearance: World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense, National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad, US Agency for International Development, Demographic and Health Surveys, Dietary Reference Intakes, high-performance liquid chromatography, atomic absorption spectroscopy.

Keith P West Jr, DrPH, George G Graham Professor of Infant and Child Nutrition, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS, Dean Emeritus and Professor of Ophthalmology, Epidemiology and International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

Frances Davidson (1942–2019)

Noted internatonal expert in nutiton dies

Frances Davidson, an international expert in nutrition, passed away on Sunday 12 May 2019 in Washington, DC, USA, afer a sudden and severe brain aneurysm. Hunger Notes conducted an interview with Frances in 2012 afer she retired fom working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for 24 years, dedicating her eforts to improving the nutritional wellbeing of people in developing nations. She served as acting Director of USAID Ofce of Nutrition and Director of nutrition programming at USAID during that time. Here is the interview recounted. Afer completing a doctorate at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Davidson came to Washington, DC, with her husband, who took a post at the British Embassy. She was hired in 1987 to work in the US Agency for International Development’s Ofce of Nutrition, and soon aferwards rose to directing the ofce. She oversaw the merger of the Ofce of Nutrition into the larger Ofce of Health and Nutrition (later the Ofce of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition; HIDN) within USAID, where she continued to focus on issues of malnutrition in lowincome countries. During her tenure at USAID, she grew the Agency’s nutrition program by establishing relationships with related sectors such as reproductive health, education, infectious diseases, agriculture and gender. Given the modest resources of the nutrition program, Davidson worked with colleagues to catalog the reasons for malnutrition in a particular country and then identifed the aspects that were appropriate for USAID investments. To this end, she built upon previous work and continued the fnding of research and analysis, both scientifc and programmatic, in developing countries through agreements with universities, governments, nongovernmental organizations, foundations and private-enterprise organizations. “One of Davidson’s major accomplisments was to contnue supportng vitamin A researc ” One of her major accomplishments was to continue supporting vitamin A research and propelling forward vitamin A policies and intervention campaigns to address this debilitating defciency. Part of that initiative was to support Dr Alfed Sommers’ groundbreaking research on vitamin A’s relation to young childhood morbidity and mortality. Congressional support for eforts to increase child survival and prevent childhood malnutrition allowed Davidson’s ofce to expand the original idea of blindness prevention through vitamin A distribution to one that included treatment, rehabilitation and skill development to enable individuals with varying types of sight impairment to lead productive and meaningfl lives. USAID worked closely with the Perkins Institute on blindness prevention as well as the Seva Foundation, HKI, the International Eye Foundation (IEF) and others to achieve this. In order to maximize impact, USAID sought out innovative ideas to reach those in need and beyond the range of most programs. In order to help accomplish this, the Ofce of Nutrition worked on developing private and public partnerships, such as with Hofmann-La Roche/Sight and Life Foundation and BASF to supply vitamin A capsules and conduct research. For instance, Hofmann-La Roche supported Sight and Life to promote young investigators’ work. Additionally, Davidson and her ofce developed and fostered private-sector partnerships to promote food fortifcation with micronutrients and other important nutrients in a number of countries. The Division of Nutrition joined with the Bill & MelinMargie Ferris Morris Chair, World Hunger Education Service © Dinesh C Sharma Frances Davidson (1942–2019)