8th KEMRI NTD Conference

The Centre for Global Health Research and the Eastern and Southern Africa Centre of International Parasite Control (ESACIPAC) are co-hosting KEMRI's 8th annual meeting at the Sovereign Hotel in Kisumu. The conference aims to foster networking among African NTD researchers and disease control programme managers.

Themes

• Reports from NTD control program managers
• Immunology and diagnostics
• Epidemiology and public health
• Control programmes, implementation and evaluation
• Health behavioral and social science

More information is available from the KEMRI website. Questions should be directed to NTDconference [at] kemricdc.org. 

Keynote address

Simon Brooker will deliver the keynote address on the morning of 11 December.

Mapping, surveillance and control of neglected tropical diseases in Kenya and beyond

Abstract: The last decade has witnessed increasing commitment to the control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), with an increasing number of countries, including Kenya, launching national NTD control programmes. Efforts to control NTDs reached a turning point in 2012, when WHO launched its NTD Roadmap and partners met in London and pledged to work together to control and eliminate 10 NTDs by 2020. As progress is made towards the goals, there is a need to obtain a detailed understanding of the geographical distributions of NTDs in order to target interventions and facilitate resource allocation. There is also a need to reliably track changes in levels of infection and identify areas where effective control is likely to be most difficult to achieve. These requirements necessaite detailed information on the geographical distribution of NTDs and reliable tools to monitor infection over time. In this talk, I will present work that seeks to define the distribution and burden of NTDs from country to global scales. Using the example of soil-transmitted helminths, I will present a framework that evaluates the feasibility of interrupting transmission and identifies the factors associated with effective STH control. Finally, I will evaluate the most cost-effective approach to the monitoring and surveillance of changes in NTD transmission. The work is conducted as part of the Global Atlas of Helminth Infections project

KEMRI Director Distinguished NTD Researcher Awards

During the meeting, KEMRI will recognise the work of two scientists for their contributions to NTD research and control in Kenya. The 2014 award goes to Simon Brooker and Jefitha Karimurio. 

Simon Brooker is Professor of Epidemiology and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK. He is co-founder of GAHI. Jefitha Karimurio is an ophthalmologist, Associate Professor and expert in trachoma control working at the Department of Ophthalmology of the University of Nairobi. Full their full bios, please KEMRI's press release.