Anthony Costello
Anthony Costello (born 20 February 1953) is a British paediatrician best known for his work on improving survival among mothers and their newborn infants in poor populations of developing countries. Until 2015 Costello was Professor of International Child Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London (UCL).
He was an attending paediatrician at University College Hospital, and the UCL Pro-Provost for Africa and the Middle East. As founder of an international charity, Women and Children First, he has helped to spread the results of his research work through mobilisation of women’s groups across Africa and south Asia. In September 2015 he joined the World Health Organisation in Geneva as Director of the Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health.
Personal life
Anthony Costello was born in Beckenham, Kent, and graduated from St Joseph's Academy in Blackheath. He attended St Catharine’s College Cambridge where he took a degree in Experimental Psychology and qualified as a doctor in Medical Sciences after clinical training at the Middlesex Hospital in London. He then trained in Paediatrics and Neonatology at University College London. He and his wife, Helen, have two sons, Harry and Ned, and one daughter, Freya.
International Work and Research
After living in Baglung district in western Nepal from 1984–1986, two days walk from a road, he became fascinated by challenges to mother and child health in poor, remote populations. His areas of scientific expertise include the evaluation of cost-effective interventions to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, women’s groups, strategies to tackle malnutrition, international aid and the health effects of climate change. In 1999 he published a pioneering book on how to improve newborn infant health in developing countries.[1]
With a Nepali organisation (MIRA), that he helped to establish, a large community trial of participatory learning and action using women’s groups in the remote mountains of Makwanpur district, Nepal was published in The Lancet in 2004.[2] He went on to establish partnerships and further studies with local organisations in eastern India, Mumbai, Bangladesh and Malawi. Seven cluster randomised controlled trials of women’s groups in Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Malawi, led to a meta-analysis published in the Lancet in May 2013.[3]
Results showed that in populations where more than 30% of pregnant women joined the women's group programme, maternal death and newborn deaths were cut by one third. The intervention has now been recommended by the World Health Organisation for scale-up in poor, rural populations.[4]
Costello chaired the 2009 Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change,[5] and was co-chair of a new Lancet Commission which links the UK, China, Norway and Sweden on emergency actions to tackle the climate health crisis, published in June 2015.
Awards
Costello holds fellowships of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal College of Physicians. In April 2011, Costello received the James Spence Medal, the highest honour of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health where he is a fellow. He serves on the Board of the global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, chaired by Dr Graca Machel. In May 2016 he received the BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award.
References
- ↑ 1999: Improving Newborn Infant Health in Developing Countries. Imperial and World Scientific Press. 1999
- ↑ 2004: Effect of a participatory intervention with women's groups on birth outcomes in Nepal: cluster-randomised controlled trial. 2004 Lancet 364: 970–99.
- ↑ 2013: Women's groups practising participatory learning and action to improve maternal and newborn health in resource-limited settings: systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet 2013 May 18;381(9879): 1736-46.
- ↑ 2014: WHO recommendation on community mobilization through facilitated participatory learning and action cycles with women's groups for maternal and newborn health. World Health Organization; ISBN 978 92 4 150727 1
- ↑ 2009: Managing the health effects of climate change: Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission. Lancet. 2009 May 16; 373(9676): 1693-1733.