Dennis Richardson

 

“Malaria, Water, and Worms: High-Impact Health Initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa“

Richardson cofounded the Bawa Health Initiative (BHI), a 501c3 based in Wallingford, Conn., six years ago when a fellow parasitologist and Bawa, Cameroon, native challenged him with the comment that “for the price of what you spend on feeding your cat, you could save the lives of children in my village.” The BHI’s sole purpose is to provide basic health care and improve the lives of the residents of Bawa and surrounding villages.

Dr. Richardson is a distinguished helminthologist and professor of biology at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. He has traveled many times to rural Cameroon, bent on improving the lives and health of the villagers he has come to know and think of as family.  Richardson and his small team have pitched tents, dug latrines and shown villagers how to construct bio-sand water filters. They have installed anti-malarial bednets, distributed medicine to treat worm infections and comforted the parents of children suffering from a myriad of hardships.

Richardson’s story is not just an account of public health interventions in the global community; it’s a narrative about individual villagers and their lives.