A Journey Through Birth Defects: From Trainee to Pediatrician’s Perspective
Published in Biomedical Research and Public Health
Many years ago, during my honorary training in neonatology, I encountered newborns with various types of birth defects, many of which I was seeing for the first time. Unfortunately, many of these babies did not survive. During this period, I became familiar with terms such as malformation, deformation, and disruption, and my curiosity about congenital anomalies grew.
At that time, I had a mobile phone with a camera whose resolution was not very good—much like my level of training at that early stage of my career. Nevertheless, I started documenting the cases I encountered. By the end of my three-month training period, I had collected enough material to prepare a presentation on the congenital anomalies I had seen during that time.
My teachers appreciated my effort to collect local data, and that moment marked the beginning of my journey into the field of birth defects.
The irony is that, many years later, the fate of many children born with birth defects remains unchanged for various reasons, including limited awareness, delayed diagnosis, and inadequate access to specialized care. It is high time that we strengthen our efforts to prevent birth defects, improve early detection, and ensure better care for affected children and their families.
I am a pediatrician working in Bangladesh. Hard work is my passion, whether or not I directly benefit from it. I find satisfaction in the process itself and remain committed to it. My aim is to bridge clinical practice and research to improve the care of neonates and children. I am particularly interested in research on birth defects, child abandonment, and other public health issues affecting children.
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Thank you for raising this important issue and for sharing such a personal and formative clinical experience.
This topic is also very close to my own professional path. My PhD research was devoted to the frequency of congenital anomalies among live births in Ukraine, and it served as a pilot study for the implementation of a Genetic Monitoring Programme. That programme no longer operates in its original form, but the work done during that period became part of a much longer and very difficult path toward systematic early detection of hereditary and congenital conditions.
In Ukraine, this path has taken almost two decades and has contributed to the development of neonatal screening and prenatal testing/diagnostic approaches aimed at earlier diagnosis, timely treatment, and prevention where possible. It was not a quick or simple process, and your post is an important reminder that behind every public health programme there are years of clinical observation, local data collection, advocacy, and persistence.
I fully agree that we still need stronger awareness, earlier diagnosis, better referral pathways, and more accessible specialized care for children with birth defects and their families.
Thank you very much for sharing your remarkable journey and for highlighting the long-term efforts required to establish a sustainable system for congenital anomaly surveillance and early diagnosis.
I look forward to exploring your work to gain knowledge and insights from the European experience in establishing genetic monitoring and birth defect surveillance systems. In Bangladesh, we are still far from developing a national birth defects registry; however, your experience provides valuable lessons and inspiration. I sincerely hope that, with sustained efforts in research, advocacy, and policy development, we will one day be able to establish such a system in our country.
Your emphasis on consistent documentation is especially important. Without reliable registration and monitoring, birth defects remain visible mainly as individual clinical tragedies, but not as a measurable public health burden.