First do no harm: why was fluid resuscitation harmful in African children?

Kathryn Maitland is Professor of Paediatric Tropical Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine and Director of the ICCARE Centre at the Global Centre of Health Innovation, Imperial College, London and an Honorary Fellow at MRC Clinical Trials Unit, University College, London.

Over the last 19 years Professor Maitland has been based full-time at the East Africa, where she leads a research group that has highlighted the unique importance of emergency-care research, previously poorly appreciated as an area for specific funder or policy investment, as a highly targeted and cost-effective means of tackling childhood mortality in resource-limited sub-Saharan Africa. As a clinical investigator Professor Maitland's work has focused upon understanding the pathophysiology and conducting clinical trials of emergency interventions to improve outcome. To enable such translational research to occur, she has built up a network of African sites and collaborations spanning the globe bringing sophisticated technologies to apply them in real life circumstances to study common diseases of Africa.