Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease Webinar | Malaria Chemoprevention Strategies
Welcome from the Chairs
1st Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease Webinar
Malaria Chemoprevention Strategies
Chemoprevention strategies are expected to contribute significantly to malaria control and elimination if largely deployed in malaria endemic settings. Intervention such as intermittent preventive treatment in pregnant women (IPTp) and seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) have proven to be highly effective, even though development of resistance to the current regimens (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and amodiaquine) warrants the implementation of alternative antimalarial drugs in the near future. Intermittent preventive treatment in infants (IPTi) has been shown to have a substantial impact on morbidity and malaria-related anemia, but its full impact is yet to be investigated in large-scale implementation studies. As transmission decreases in some settings, there is an age shifting of disease burden in older infants, and intermittent preventive treatment in schoolchildren (IPTc) is being explored in some countries. Mass drug administration (MDA) is another strategy, mainly used in elimination settings that has been shown to work in some settings, but not in others. Specific strategies are also needed for P.vivax, as the implementation of radical cure drug-based strategies is associated with potential lethal hemolysis in G6PD-deficient patients. To maximize the impact of all those interventions, new antimalarial drugs will be required, as the effectiveness of those currently used is either decreasing or may decrease in the near future. In the meantime, innovative strategies must be implemented to extend the useful therapeutic lifespan of the antimalarial drugs we currently have, and different drugs should be used for chemoprevention and case management to reduce drug pressure and minimize the chances of drug resistance development. In this webinar, we have invited three experts to discuss about the challenges in the implementation of chemoprevention strategies in malaria endemic countries.
Date: 28 March 2022
Time: 1:30pm CEST | 7:30am EDT | 7:30pm CST Asia
Webinar ID: 872 1424 5786
Webinar Secretariat: tropicalmed.webinar@mdpi.com
Chairs
Global and Tropical Health Divisions, Menzies School of Health Research and Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia
Associate Professor Kamala Ley-Thriemer is a CSL Centenary Fellow at Menzies School of Health Research. Her main research interest is to develop and optimise treatment options against vivax malaria in south-east Asia and the Horn of Africa. She leads a research program spanning from clinical trials and epidemiological studies to policy and implementation research. She also teaches in Menzies Postgraduate Public Health programs for Charles Darwin University.
Yale School of Public Health, Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health, New Haven, USA
Professor Parikh’s is a physician-scientist with over 20 years of experience working in malaria. He completed his medical training at Johns Hopkins, Internal Medicine residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, MPH at UC Berkeley, and infectious disease fellowship at UCSF where he stayed on as faculty for 8 years before joining the Yale School of Public Health in 2012. His research focuses on translational studies of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, working in Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Cameroon. Dr. Parikh’s work in Uganda focuses on optimizing ACT regimens in vulnerable populations. Studies with the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, UCSF, and Baylor, combine intensive and population pharmacokinetic data with host parasite and drug resistance dynamics. In Burkina Faso, his long-standing collaboration with the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Sante focuses on the novel endectocide, ivermectin, as well as studies on antimalarial drug resistance surveillance in the setting of chemoprevention and treatment.
Department of Medicine, Medicines Development Unit, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland
Dr Christian Nsanzabana is a biologist by training, and has more than 15 years’ experience in malaria research going from basic to translational and implementation research. He completed his PhD in Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Neuchâtel in 2008, followed by one year at the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS), overseeing different projects assessing the efficacy of new products for malaria vector control. Between 2010 and 2015, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and University of Oxford, where he worked on mode of actions and mechanisms of resistance of antimalarial drugs, and meta-analyses to assess the factors affecting efficacy drugs, respectively. He further worked with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) on the quality control of malaria rapid diagnostic test. He is currently a Group Leader at Swiss TPH, where he leads the Malaria Genotyping Group.
Invited Speakers
Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, Switzerland
André Tchouatieu is a Medical Doctor from University of Bujumbura – Burundi. Currently he is the Director of Access and product Management at Medicines for malaria venture (MMV) in Geneva where he leads the Chemoprevention strategy looking at how best antimalarial medicines can be used preventatively to protect people in endemic countries and facilitating access to these drugs. Prior to joining MMV, he has worked for several years with Sanofi as country manager in Burundi, Medical advisor for Eastern Africa based in Nairobi, and Global Malaria Senior Medical Manager in the access to Medicines department of Sanofi based in Paris. Prior to Sanofi, André had served as a field Doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières in Burundi and Eastern DRC. His main interests are in access to and quality of care in Africa and particularly access to good quality medicines in General, focusing on malaria as one of the major public health issues in the continent. With the R&D team at MMV, he is looking at potential replacement solution to SPAQ for seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) to anticipate resistance and allow geographical extension of this intervention. He is exploring the feasibility of extending SMC to older children (5-10 years old), exploring the improvement of Intermittent preventive treatment in Infants (IPTi) for a better acceptance by endemic countries in Africa and contemplating the adoption of a different protocol for Intermittent preventive treatment during pregnancy (IPTp) in areas where sulfadoxine pyrimethamine seems to decrease in efficacy. Andre is also involved in exploring the feasibility of multiple first line therapies (MFTs) for acute malaria treatment in public sector setting to divide the drug pressure, mitigate the occurrence of resistance and therefore extend the therapeutic life of antimalarials. He contributed to the set up and is the Secretary of the SMC Alliance group as part of the RBM CRSPC.
Dr. Jane Achan is a medical doctor with a PhD in Biomedical Sciences, a master’s degree in Pediatrics and Child health and master’s training in Clinical Trials. She is the Senior Research Advisor at Malaria Consortium where she oversees and supports the research agenda across the different Malaria Consortium countries in Africa and South East Asia. Prior to this she was the Malaria Research Coordinator at the Medical Research Council Unit in The Gambia, a Senior Scientist with the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration in Uganda and a Lecturer at the department of Pediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University. She has been involved in clinical and operational research in the fields of infectious diseases (malaria and HIV), maternal and child health and health systems for the past 20 years. Her professional interests include evaluation of chemotherapeutic interventions to guide health policy, evaluation of health-related impact of interventions and operational health systems research. More recently she has been involved in evaluating potential interactions between COVID-19 and malaria and exploring the role of innovative strategies for malaria burden reduction in special risk populations in high burden settings.
For the past fifteen years Dr. Raquel Gonzalez has worked as study field coordinator, project manager and investigator of several epidemiological studies in Tetouan (Morocco), Manhiça (Mozambique) and Nairobi (Kenya), focusing her research on poverty-related diseases such as malaria, HIV and maternal health. Since 2012, she collaborates with the Global Malaria Program of the World Health Organization providing technical inputs and updating the guidelines for prevention of malaria in pregnancy. She is also lecturer at the Master of Global Health from ISGlobal (UB). Currently, she is co- Principal Investigator of the EDCTP-funded MAMAH multicentre clinical trial, which aims at improving the health of African pregnant women.
Webinar Content
Program
|
Speaker/Presentation |
Time in CET |
|
Chair Chair Introduction |
1:30 - 1:40 pm |
|
Dr. André-Marie Tchouatieu Perception of Malaria Chemoprevention Interventions in Infants and Children in Eight Sub-Saharan African Countries: An End User Perspective Study |
1:40 - 2:00 pm |
|
Dr. Jane Achan Challenges with mass drug administration |
2:00 - 2:20 pm |
|
Dr. Raquel Gonzalez Alternative antimalarial drugs for IPTp |
2:20 - 2:40 pm |
|
Q&A Session |
2:40 - 2:55 pm |
|
Closing of Webinar Chair |
2:55 - 3:00 pm |
Relevant SI
Guest Editors: Dr. Christian Nsanzabana, Dr. Kamala Ley-Thriemer & Prof. Dr. Sunil Parikh
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2022
Sponsors and Partners
Organizers
