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The people behind The Global Report on Research for Infectious Diseases of Poverty

The global TDR Think Tank of over 130 experts was established in 2008 to focus on research for infectious diseases of poverty. From the outset the concept was to ensure input from researchers and policy-makers from the countries of the greatest disease burden. Working in ten disease-specific and thematic reference groups these experts carried out a review and consultation process to identify top research priorities. Each reference group had a chair or co-chair from a disease-endemic country, and was hosted by a country or regional office of the World Health Organization.

The Global Report on Research for Infectious Diseases of Poverty (called The Global Report) drew additional experts in a variety of fields from across the globe to review these reports and their lists of disease research priorities, conduct additional research and analysis, and develop broader concepts and recommendations. They worked within chapters, and also met twice as a group.

About the Global Report authors

Agyeman Badu Akosa

Chapter 3: Health systems research and infectious diseases of poverty: from the margins to the mainstream

Agyeman Badu Akosa, who served as Director General of the Ghana Health Service from 2003 to 2007, is a doctor, pathologist, researcher and social commentator. He has been Professor and Head of Department of Pathology at the University of Ghana Medical School, Clinical Director of Pathology at Whipps Cross Hospital in London, and President of both the Ghana and Commonwealth medical associations. Currently he is Chairman of Ghana Healthcare and Pensions Ltd. and Executive Director of Healthy Ghana, an NGO that studies the wider social determinants of health.

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Enriqueta Bond

Chapter 6: Agenda for action

Dr Enriqueta Bond served from 1994 to 2008 as President of The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, which she guided in its transition from a corporate to a private independent foundation. A geneticist by training with experience in infectious diseases research, she had previously served for 20 years at the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, the last five as the institute’s Chief Executive Officer.

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Mushtaque Chowdhury

Chapter 3: Health systems research and infectious diseases of poverty: from the margins to the mainstream

Dr Mushtaque Chowdhury is Senior Adviser on Health and Acting Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, which he joined in 2009, focusing on health systems and disease surveillance. Previously he was the Deputy Executive Director of BRAC, a large Bangladesh nongovernmental organization, where he founded its Research and Evaluation Division and supervised programmes focused on village-based primary health care, maternity, newborn and child health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and control of tuberculosis and malaria. He was the founding Dean of the BRAC University James P. Grant School of Public Health and is Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University in New York.

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Ulisses Confalonieri

Chapter 2: Environment, climate change, social factors and the implications for controlling infectious diseases of poverty

A professor of Public Health, Ulisses Confalonieri is associated with LAESA, Centro de Pesquisas Rene Rachou, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Belo Horizonte - Brazil, the research institute that advises the Brazilian minister of health on policy. There he heads a team that studies the effects of changes in climate, and land cover on human health, with a focus on infectious diseases. He is also a professor at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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Miguel Angel González-Block

Chapter 3: Health systems research and infectious diseases of poverty: from the margins to the mainstream

Miguel Angel González-Block is the Executive Director of the Centre for Health Systems Research (CHSR) at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico. His work focuses on research, education and service regarding social protection in health and health systems integration, with a special focus on vulnerable groups. He also runs the Mesoamerican Institute of Public Health, an initiative aimed at providing technical support and strengthening the Mesoamerican Public Health System. He was Manager of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at WHO from 1999 to 2004."

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Siân Griffiths

Chapter 1: Why research infectious diseases of poverty?

Professor Siân Griffiths is Director of the School of Public Health and Primary Care at the Chinese University in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, where she advises the government on health policy. She joined the university in 2005 as Director of the School of Public Health and later became Chair of the Department of Community and Family Medicine. A citizen of the United Kingdom, she was invited to work in China after she co-chaired the Hong Kong SAR Government's expert committee on the SARS epidemic in 2003.

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Eyitayo Lambo

Chapter 6: Agenda for action

An economist by training, Professor Eyitayo Lambo served as Nigeria’s Minister of Health from 2003 to 2007. His appointment came after he had spent two years as the Director of the Change Agent (for Health Sector Reform) Programme that was developed cooperatively by the governments of Nigeria and the United Kingdom. Earlier he spent nearly a decade as Health Economist and later Regional Adviser for health sector reforms, health care financing and health in socioeconomic development for WHO.

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Ajay Mahal

Chapter 5: Research and development funding for infectious diseases of poverty: from landscape to architecture

Ajay Mahal is the Alan and Elizabeth Finkel Chair of Global Health and Professor at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of International Health Economics at Harvard University in the United States. An expert on health financing, social determinants of health and the economics of HIV/AIDS, Dr Mahal has worked as a health economics advisor in Gaza and the West Bank, and as a consultant to the Indian Government.

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Lenore Manderson

Chapter 4: Innovation and new technologies to tackle infectious diseases of poverty

Lenore Manderson is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. As a public health scholar and social scientist, she works on gender and sexuality, and on infectious and non-communicable diseases, among minority populations in Australia, Asia and Africa. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the World Academy of Art and Science, and is Editor of the international journal Medical Anthropology. She is a member of CARTA – the Consortium of Advanced Research and Training in Africa – which involves multiple African universities and research institutes working together to build research capacity. Since 1988, she has worked closely with WHO/TDR, and in 2012, joins the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC).

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AJ (Tony) McMichael

Chapter 2: Environment, climate change, social factors and the implications for controlling infectious diseases of poverty

Professor Tony McMichael heads the research programme on health risks of climate and environmental changes at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australia National University, where he served as Director from 2001-2007. Previously he was Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. For two decades he has been a research advisor on climate change and health to WHO and other UN agencies. Currently he is a Science Advisor to the Australian Government's Climate Commission.

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Gustav Nossal

Chapter 6: Agenda for action

Sir Gustav Nossal is a world-renowned medical researcher who is noted for his contributions to the fields of antibody formation and immunological tolerance. The author of five books and 530 scientific articles on these and related subjects, Sir Gustav served for more than 30 years until 1996 as Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. He is currently Professor Emeritus within the Department of Pathology at the University of Melbourne. He is a former President of the 30,000-member International Union of Immunological Societies.

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Giorgio Roscigno

Chapter 4: Innovation and new technologies to tackle infectious diseases of poverty

Chief Operations Officer at the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM), until recently Giorgio Roscigno served as Chief Executive Officer for FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics). He has a long standing career in drug development, having previously been the Acting Chief Executive Officer; Senior Advisor; Director of Strategic Development for the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, the Medical Director Anti-infectives at Aventis International in France, and the Global Rifamycin Development Director at Hoechst Marion Rousse. During the course of his career Roscigno has also worked in many countries all over the world, including Algeria, Italy. Ethiopia and Eritrea and well as Belgium and the USA.

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Jeanette Vega

Chapter 5: Research and development funding for infectious diseases of poverty: from landscape to architecture

Dr Jeanette Vega is the Director of the Center for Epidemiology and Public Health Policy at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile. She was Chile’s Vice Minister of Health from 2008 to 2010. Earlier in the decade she was Director of the National Institute of Public Health after having served on the President’s advisory committee on the restructuring of the Chilean health system. From 2003 to 2007, she was at WHO as Director of Equity, Poverty and Social Determinants of Health.

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Yongyuth Yuthavong

Chapter 4: Innovation and new technologies to tackle infectious diseases of poverty

A former minister of science and technology for Thailand, Professor Yuthavong works on antimalarial drugs at the country’s National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA). He previously served two terms as NSTDA Director and is a past President of the Thai Academy of Science and Technology. He also had a long research and teaching career at Mahidol University, where he was appointed Professor of Biochemistry in 1983. He has received numerous awards, including the Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation from Nihon Keizai Shimbun in Japan and the Outstanding Scientist of Thailand Award from the Foundation for Promotion of Science and Technology.

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Xiao-Nong Zhou

Chapter 1: Why research infectious diseases of poverty?

Professor Xiao-Nong Zhou was appointed in 2010 to be the Director of the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases at the Chinese Center for Diseases Control and Prevention, after serving nearly a decade as Deputy Director. He has worked for more than a quarter of a century in the research and control of parasitic diseases, having begun his career as China’s leading authority on Oncomelania hupensis, the snail species that is the intermediate host of schistosomiasis (or bilharzia) in China. In 1994, he became the first Chinese student to obtain a PhD at the Danish Bilharzia Laboratory at Copenhagen University. Currently, Professor Zhou is serving as Chair of the National Expert Advisory Committee on schistosomiasis and other parasitic diseases in China’s Ministry of Health. He has published extensively on parasitology and parasitic diseases and has collaborated with WHO/TDR and WHO, including as member of WHO's Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee on Neglected Tropical Diseases and WHO's Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group.