Dr Helen Fifer

Helen Fifer is a Consultant Medical Microbiologist at the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and Clinical Lead for the National Reference Laboratory for Sexually Transmitted Infections.

She leads activities in STI diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance surveillance, and pathogen characterization, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance in bacterial sexually transmitted infections, including Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Mycoplasma genitalium.

She contributes to the development of national STI management guidelines through the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) and provides specialist laboratory and epidemiological expertise for outbreak investigations and public health responses. She also leads the UKHSA Syphilis Task Force and advises the National Health Service Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Screening Programme.

Internationally, she has contributed to WHO and United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guideline development and serves as an Editor of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.