Dr Esmita Charani returns from research collaboration in Bangladesh and India

Esmita with the India site ESRC study staff Surya, Vrinda, and Pranav

Dr Esmita Charani has spent 7 weeks in Dhaka and Cochin as part of ongoing and developing research collaborations with partner research centres

Dr Esmita Charani has spent 7 weeks in Bangladesh and India as part of ongoing and developing research collaborations with research centres in Dhaka and Cochin. 

In Dhaka, she spent time with the researchers from Prof Samir Saha's team at the Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) learning about the effective and highly impressive surveillance systems for detecting childhood invasive bacterial infections. We hope to welcome CHRF researchers to visit our centre in the near future.

In India, Dr Charani spent 6 weeks training newly recruited staff to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded ASPIRES research programme at the teaching hospital of the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences. The intense time spent in India was extremely fruitful and set the foundation for effective research capacity building particularly in understanding the local context, establishing robust research governance, and providing strong supervision, mentorship and support. The studies in India are now well under way with the research team fully operationalised and a robust system in place for data gathering and sharing. The team look forward to repeating the processes for the next study site at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.