For Release: September 28, 2009
Contact: David Corriveau, Media Relations Officer, Dartmouth Medical School, at David.A.Corriveau@Dartmouth.edu or 603-653-0771
A Call for Ultrasound Around the World
Robert D. Harris, M.D., M.P.H., recently coauthored a review article on the need for compact ultrasound equipment to improve care for mothers and newborns in poor parts of the developing world.
In the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, Harris, an associate professor of radiology and of obstetrics and gynecology at Dartmouth Medical School, joins the University of Washington's William M. Marks, M.D., in calling for "field trials of compact ultrasound on a scale commensurate with public health interventions." The researchers point to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 99 percent of maternal deaths around the Earth happen in the Third World, and note anecdotal evidence of a drop in maternal deaths the year after they donated such a device to a hospital in an isolated part of Nicaragua.
Harris is director of ultrasound at Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center. He earned his medical degree at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in 1982, completed his residency in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and did a year's fellowship at the University of Washington Hospitals. He came to Dartmouth in 1987, and earned his M.P.H. from The Dartmouth Institute (TDI) for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in 2009.
The journal article can be viewed here.