Professor Paul Fine

Paul Fine trained in veterinary medicine in the United States, and in epidemiology in the United Kingdom. He worked in the smallpox eradication programme in India in 1975 and joined the staff of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (London, United Kingdom) in 1976, where he has been Professor of Communicable Disease Epidemiology since 1992. He directed a large epidemiological research programme (the "Karonga Prevention Study") in Malawi from 1978-2006. This focused initially on the natural history of leprosy, but evolved into a trial of vaccines against leprosy and tuberculosis and ultimately into a broad research programme including demographic surveillance, genetics and HIV research.  Recent interests in vaccines have included the implications of the transmissibility of oral polio vaccine virus for the global polio eradication programme, the assessment and implications of “non-specific effects” of vaccines, evaluation of veterinary vaccines, and procedures for the optimization of vaccination schedules in low and middle income countries.