Dr. Sam Akech

Affiliation(s):

Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders, KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya

Sam Akech is paediatrician with Dphil in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford, UK. He was initially based at the Kilifi site where he did studies leading to his PhD. He investigated haemodynamic status of children with severe febrile illnesses and conducted a number of clinical trials comparing different fluid regimes for treatment of shock in that population of children. He is currently a post-doctoral research fellow investigating risk factors for mortality and morbidity of common childhood conditions, guidance compliance and outcomes spanning hospitals (clusters) within Clinical Information Network. He aims inform case management of these conditions with high mortality, including triage, and identify outstanding questions that require pragmatic trials.

Prof. Mike English

Affiliations:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University

Mike worked in Kilifi from 1992 on malaria, in the early years of the ‘Kilifi’ programme, and returned to the UK in 1996 to complete specialist training as a General Paediatrician in 1998. He returned to Kilifi in 1999 to rejoin the programme and work on neonatal illnesses as part of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship while also working as a paediatrician in Kilifi District Hospital. In 2004 after some work at more national level on quality of paediatric care he moved to Nairobi where he continues to work with the programme as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. He was made Professor of International Child Health in Oxford in 2010. His work has included developing national, evidence-based guidelines for care of severely ill children and newborns, at first in 2005 and then updated in 2010 andArray 2013. To complement these Mike and colleagues developed the ETAT+ course, adapting WHO’s ETAT course and expanding its scope to include evidence-based case management of serious illness in the child and newborn periods. The ETAT+ course is now provided with the help of multiple colleagues and the Kenya Paediatric Association with training conducted across Kenya and for Kenyan medical students. Others have taken the course to Rwanda, Uganda and Somaliland. More information on this course and the approach to developing national guidelines can be found at www.idoc-africa.org. The Health Services Unit he leads has undertaken long-term studies by a multidisciplinary team on initiating and establishing ‘best-practices’ within rural government hospitals. This has resulted in a Kenyan team working with the support of international collaborators on hospital performance measurement, cost-effectiveness, motivation, task-shifting, and barriers to implementation. More recently work has started on governance, leadership, human resources for health and knowledge translation. The group are well known for their work on measuring and testing interventions to improve paediatric and neonatal quality of care. Mike and the group work closely with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and he provides technical advice to WHO on a range of issues related to child and newborn survival.