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       Dr. Alvin Zipursky was a renowned specialist in pediatric hematology, and committed crusader for global health initiatives.

       Courtesy of Hospital For Sick Children

       Dr. Alvin (Zip) Zipursky, a renowned specialist in pediatric hematology, and committed crusader for global health initiatives, played a pivotal role in one of the most dramatic advancements of 20th-century medicine. His research was integral to the discovery of a treatment for rhesus hemolytic disease (Rh), a blood-based incompatibility between a pregnant mother and her child. Without intervention, the disease is frequently fatal to the fetus or newborn.

       Dr. Zipursky’s achievement, described in one publication as the equivalent of finding a grain of salt in a bowl of sugar, helped lead to a treatment. With a cost of perhaps $50, the treatment became widespread in wealthy countries, but the disease continues to take a toll on women in less developed countries where, for the sake of a few dollars, mothers can lose baby after baby. This harsh reality remained a lifelong frustration for Dr. Zipursky.

       “It’s stupid for a woman in Canada to have no problems while a woman in a developing country goes through hell,” he said.

       One obstacle to Dr. Zipursky’s goal of curing Rh disease in the developing world was apathy from the global community. A U.S. government scientist once asked him how many babies died each year worldwide as a result of Rh. “I told her it was around 100,000. She said, ‘That’s not much.’” He was flabbergasted. “That’s not much? One baby is too many.”

       Later in life, the octogenarian doctor continued his battle to eliminate Rh disease in sub-Saharan Africa, India and other areas by forging partnerships that led to the development of the Consortium for Universal Rh Elimination (based at Stanford University), and the Worldwide Initiative for Rh Eradication (based at Columbia University). Always an optimist, Dr. Zipursky was fond of saying, “If it was easy to solve it would have been done already. When people say it cannot be done, that’s when I get the most inspiration to tackle a problem.”

       Dr. Zipursky was 90 when he died of heart failure on Aug. 10 at his home in Toronto.

       Pediatric research, and the care of countless infants and children with blood diseases, including leukemia, were areas in which Dr. Zipursky accrued a dazzling array of credentials: Founding chair of pediatrics and professor at McMaster University Medical School (1966 to 1972 and 1978 to 1981) head of Hematology and Oncology at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (1981 to 1991), and professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto (1981 to 1996) are but three positions that appear on his CV. He set up the Program for Global Pediatric Research, aimed at focusing expertise on children’s diseases in developing countries; published more than 150 medical papers; and held membership in an exhaustive number of professional societies, generally as chair or president.

       In 1999, against stiff international competition, he was named editor-in-chief of Pediatric Research, a prestigious academic journal. In that role he persuaded the publisher to make studies free online to researchers and clinicians in low-income countries. Improving health for disadvantaged children was never far from his mind. In 2011 he was named an officer of the Order of Canada.

       Those who knew Dr. Zipursky as a mentor, friend or colleague remember a kind, congenial and humorous fellow. A newspaper reporter observed that within minutes of meeting someone, he was likely to throw a friendly arm over their shoulder and start calling them “kiddo.” He once began a lecture with, “Giving a lecture is like having a baby. Easy to conceive. Much harder to deliver.”

       Margaret Manley-Kucey, a friend and colleague, said Dr. Zipursky was a joy to be around. “‘Educate me’ he’d say any time he came across something new, from a complex scientific concept to a type of food. He saw the absolute best in every person he met,” Ms. Manley-Kucey said. “He didn’t see boundaries, borders or divisions.”

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       Despite the serious nature of his work, Dr. Zipursky maintained a light-hearted playfulness that endeared him to children, including his own. Dr. Zipursky’s three sons remember a mathematical performance he sometimes enacted with their dog, Georgie Girl. Ben Zipursky said, “Dad would ask ‘What is two plus two?’ She would bark four times. ‘What is seven minus five?’ Two barks. Finally, after more demonstrations, when the oohs and aahs of guests subsided, Dad would say ‘Georgie, what’s a dog’s life like?’ She would answer immediately with one bark, ‘Ruff.’ And my dad would say ‘Yes. I know. It’s rough.’”

       Alvin Zipursky was delivered on Sept. 27, 1930, in Winnipeg, the second son of Doris (née Sorokin) a homemaker and Isaac Zipursky, an auto mechanic who developed a successful garage and gas station in the north end of the city. Both Zipursky parents came from large families. When Alvin’s older brother enlisted in the navy during the Second World War, young Alvin became an only child with 50 or so cousins for company.

       Academically gifted, he was a popular student who played football at St. John’s High School. In 1947, he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Manitoba. It wasn’t until he began medical school that true romance entered his life. Freda Cohen, a girl with an affinity for English literature, whom he had known in high school, married him on June 16, 1953.

       Ms. Zipursky obtained a BA from the University of Manitoba then an MA in English from McMaster University in Hamilton. Her main focus; however, was raising the family, and supporting her husband’s burgeoning career. Their marriage lasted 52 years until her death in 2005.

       After graduating from medical school in Winnipeg at just 22 years old, Dr. Zipursky did his best to help the city cope with a polio epidemic. Many children were confined inside enormous contraptions, called iron lungs, that enabled them to breathe.

       Polio also engulfed Cincinnati as Dr. Zipursky embarked on a pediatric residency at the city’s Children’s Hospital before taking a research fellowship in pediatrics and hematology.

       He then spent a year specializing in hematology at Salt Lake City County General Hospital, Utah. In 1957, he and his young family returned to Canada and the University of Manitoba, where an unlikely source of funding awaited.

       At the time, medical researchers were poorly paid and often forced to juggle several jobs. Fortunately for Dr. Zipursky, he applied for, and received, research funding from the Playtex Park Research Institute, endowed by a company known for manufacturing girdles and bras.

       Dr. Zipursky found it amusing. “Lo and behold, I became a Playtex Park Fellow,” he told a reporter with a laugh, “that made my career.” He wasn’t kidding. Funding from Playtex allowed him to make a crucial finding in the international race to treat Rh disease. He discovered that trace amounts of fetal blood regularly cross the placenta into the mother’s blood, something previously thought impossible.

       It was a revelation: The source of the mother’s Rh-negative immune response was caused by Rh-positive blood from her unborn child, a genetic inheritance from the child’s father. The mother’s blood could then enter the fetus’s bloodstream, carrying an army of hostile antibodies.

       Dr. Zipursky published his findings in The Lancet, a world-leading medical journal. Researchers subsequently theorized that an injection of anti-Rh antibodies might prevent fetal cells from triggering an undesired immune response in the mother. The theory held.

       Dr. Isaac Odame, Section Head of Hematology at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children said, “It’s still a mystery exactly how that happens but we know it works.”

       New York researchers forged ahead to produce Rh immune globulin. Concurrently, the same idea about injecting antibodies occurred to Dr. Zipursky. He approached Winnipeg’s Dr. Bruce Chown, a leading researcher in the field of Rh disease, and asked for the names of four women with high levels of antibodies. Dr. Zipursky trudged through snow to knock on their doors to ask if they would donate blood once a week. Having lost multiple babies, they all said yes. The women’s antibodies were extracted and became the basis of Canada’s first Rh immune globulin called WinRho. It was produced by the University of Toronto’s Connaught Laboratories and continues in production today.

       In a book titled Rh: The Intimate History of a Disease and its Conquest, author David Zimmerman wrote, “Within a career span of a single scientific generation, researchers developed a weapon to defeat it. Rarely is a disease dealt with so effectively in such little time.”

       Having played a major role in the triumphant effort to conquer Rh disease, Dr. Zipursky then focused on improving the health of children in low-income countries around the world. His work continues through the organizations he founded.

       Dr. Zipursky leaves his sons, Larry, Bob and Ben; late-life partner Ayala Manolson; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Freda, predeceased him.