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David Picou was born on March 23rd 1927 in Port of Spain,
Trinidad. He attended Tranquillity Boys’ Intermediate School and
Queen’s Royal College. On completing his studies, he taught
science for one year at his alma mater. He attended Long Island
University in Brooklyn, New York and graduated with a Bachelor
of Science degree.
Though keen on becoming an architect, Picou honoured his
parents’ wishes and pursued medicine at the University College
of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. He graduated with the
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree (1955) and
began an internship in paediatrics. He did his residency at the
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (1957) and was appointed a
research fellow in clinical nutrition (1956). He was also an
instructor in paediatrics at University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.
In 1959, Picou was recruited by the Tropical Metabolism Research
Unit (TMRU), which was set up and funded by the Medical Research
Council in England. Here, he made significant contributions to
address the problem of child malnutrition. One was the
production of a booklet, adopted for use by the WHO and entitled
“The treatment and management of severe protein-energy
malnutrition”.
He obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of
London (1963) and when the UWI, Mona acquired the TMRU in 1970,
he was appointed its Head. In 1973, he was appointed Professor
of Experimental Medicine and TMRU’s Director, a post he held for
seven years.
Dr. Picou was a member of the Advisory Committee of the World
Hunger Programme of the United Nations University, the UNAIDS
Ethics Committee in Geneva, and the editorial board of the West
Indian Medical Journal. He was the scientific secretary for the
Caribbean Health Research Council and its first Director of
Research.
He headed the Task Force that developed the Mount Hope Medical
Sciences Complex in Trinidad during the period 1978-1987. He is
associated with the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre, where he is
the current Chairman of the Research Ethics Committee.
For his outstanding contribution to medical sciences in the
Caribbean, he has received several awards, including the PAHO/WHO
Medal (1986), the Commonwealth Caribbean Medical Research
Council Award (1995), and the Sir Philip Sherlock Distinguished
Award (2001).
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