Dr Paola Marchesini

Dr Paola Marchesini graduated in Medicine at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (1983), Brazil. She has 2 years of specialization in Public Health/Epidemiology from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She obtained her Masters in Community Medicine at Heidelberg University, Germany (Ruprecht-Karls) (1993), and her PhD in Demography at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (2001) and Princeton University, USA.  She is currently engaged in postdoctoral studies at the Tropical Medicine Center at the University of Brasília.

Dr Marchesini worked at the Roll Back Malaria and the WHO Global Malaria Programme from 1999 to 2004 and at the Pan American Organization of Health in Brasília, Brazil from 2005 to 2008.

Since 2008, she has been working at the National Malaria Control Programme of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. From 2015 to 2016, she served as Deputy Coordinator of the National Malaria Control Programme.

Dr Marchesini has over 20 years of experience in malaria in Latin America and has also worked with some countries in Africa.

She supports the Program by providing strategic technical input on a range of areas including antimalarial treatment, drug resistance, monitoring and evaluation, surveillance, epidemiology, capacity building and malaria prevention. She acts as the implementation and operational research focal point. She assists the National Malaria Control Program on malaria elimination efforts, mainly on risk-stratification approaches, and access to diagnosis and treatment for remote populations.

She has a wide experience on malaria control and elimination at sub-national, national and international levels and has participated in malaria control program evaluations in many countries.