Dr. Emelda Okiro

Emelda has over 15 years of professional experience in Epidemiology and Public health and heads the Population health unit. She has worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Philips Research Africa and also worked with several partners including PMI and ICF Macro.

Emelda returned to the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in October 2016 from a Senior Health Scientist position at Philips Research Africa. She is leading the Population Health unit and Research theme within the Programme which aims to understand changing epidemiology of malaria, understand the determinants of health transitions and vulnerabilities at fine scales a major component of which is malnutrition in Kenya and across Africa, and to embed the use of data for decision-making by national ministries.

Her current work focuses on exploring the spatial heterogeneity of child survival across Kenya using multiple survey data to map and explore the Spatial, Social and Environmental determinants of childhood mortality. Emelda has previously worked on the measurements of trends of P. falciparum burden across sites of varying malaria endemicities in Africa and on evaluating the impact of scaled malaria control interventions and supporting regional Ministries of Health in Uganda, Malawi and Kenya. At the Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, Seattle Emelda worked on identifying determinants of cost-effective anti-retroviral treatment programs in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

During her academic research career, she has been awarded two internationally competitive Wellcome Trust Research Fellowships. Emelda is widely published and has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Egerton University, Kenya and a PhD in Epidemiology through the Open University – UK in collaboration with Warwick University, UK.

Prof. Bob Snow

Email : RSnow@kemri-wellcome.org

Bob has worked in Africa for over 32 years. He is Professor of Malaria Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and Principal Scientist in the programme based in Nairobi. His work began with the first clinical trials of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITN) in The Gambia (1984-1988) and he has since developed a large programme of work from Kenya on the phenotype of malaria disease, its relationship to parasite exposure and its wider public health burden. His work has influenced international strategies for pro-poor access to ITN, how sub-regional, evidence-based platforms can effectively change malaria treatment policies and how inequities in international donor assistance for malaria control can be changed with appropriate data on risk and national economic capacities at global scales. He has published over 400 articles on malaria, he is the longest serving Oxford scientist of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust collaboration in Kenya (since 1989), he established the MARA pan-African collaboration (1996), was the founding Director of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) (2005-2010), is a technical advisor to the Kenyan Government, sits on a number of international malaria advisory panels and is the Senior Advisor to the UK-DFID funded INFORM Project. Bob’s work continues to provide the bridge between basic malaria epidemiology and malaria control policy in the region. From 2015, his work extended to provide support to WHO countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Bob was made a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 2008 and an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2015. He is supported by the Wellcome Trust (UK) as a Principal Fellow

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.

Dr. Evelyn Gitau

Dr. Evelyn Gitau is the Director of Research Capacity Strengthening. Under her direction, the division will continue to grow its signature fellowship program, the Consortium for the Advancement of Research Training in Africa (CARTA), and expand opportunities across the continent for African scholars to become great research leaders.

Dr. Gitau’s most recent role was as a program manager at the African Academy of Sciences, where she stewarded the Grand Challenges Africa at the Academy under the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) program. Prior to that, she was part of the team at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Program in Kilifi, Kenya, conducting research on developing biomarkers of disease among seriously ill children.

Dr. Gitau earned her PhD in Life Sciences from the Open University/Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK, investigating neurological infections in children living in malaria-endemic areas. She has more than 15 years of experience in medical research.

Among her awards and accomplishments include a 2015 appointment as a fellow of the Next Einstein Forum, where she is the ambassador for the development of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Africa.

Dr. Gitau’s vast networks have brought her positions on numerous advisory boards for organizations advancing the agenda of research and evidence generation in Africa. These include the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB), Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme College of Medicine, Blantyre, Malawi, University of Oxford (MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine) and and the Investment Committee Grand Challenges Canada. She will remain a member of the Steering Committee for Grand Challenges Africa.

Prof. Kathryn Maitland, FMedSc

Professor of Paediatric Tropical Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine and Director of the ICCARE Centre at the Global Centre of Health Innovation, Imperial College, London and an Honorary Fellow at MRC Clinical Trials Unit, University College, London. Over the last 17 years she has been based full-time at the East Africa, where she leads a research group whose major research portfolio includes severe malaria, bacterial sepsis and severe malnutrition in children and clinical trials in emergency care. Her team conducted the largest trial in critically children ever undertaken in Africa (FEAST trial) examining fluid resuscitation strategies in children with severe febrile illness, showing that fluid boluses increased mortality compared to no-bolus (control) (Maitland et al, NEJM 2011). Her team is currently running two other large clinical trials investigating transfusion and other treatment strategies in 3950 African children with severe life-threatening anaemia (TRACT; Mpoya et al Trials 2016) and the optimum oxygen saturation threshold for which oxygen should be targeted and how best to administer oxygen in 4800 children (COAST: Children Oxygenation Administration Strategies Trial).

Dr. Georgina Murphy

Georgina is a Postdoctoral Researcher in health services epidemiology. Her research is currently focused on essential health services for sick newborns in Kenya and evaluating task-shifting as a means to improving service delivery. Georgina is a Research Associate at Green Templeton College and a consultant for the Naji Foundation. Her PhD at the University of Cambridge focused on the epidemiology of non-communicable diseases in rural Uganda.

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.