African Researchers Tackle Infectious Diseases

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Nairobi, Kenya I 04 December 2019 I Five African scientists have received funding to conduct research that will contribute to global efforts to reduce the burden and threat of locally relevant infectious diseases in Africa.

The five fellows will be funded through the TIBA-AAS Out of Africa Postdoctoral Fellowship programme for a year as visiting fellows of the University of Edinburgh. They will conduct basic and implementation research ranging from the impact of mass drug administration as a means of controlling parasitic diseases of public health concern to the ethics of clinical trials conducted in Africa. Their research addresses knowledge gaps and will generate new knowledge, which will advance efforts to tackle infectious diseases.

The fellowship programme is a groundbreaking, new collaboration between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and the UK National Institutes of Health Research Global Health Unit Tackling Infections to Benefit Africa (TIBA) at the University of Edinburgh. TIBA is an Africa-led, wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary partnership which brings together world-class researchers from nine African countries, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe plus colleagues from the University of Edinburgh to generate new knowledge and inform comparative analyses of health systems. Funding for the Fellowships has been provided by the University of Edinburgh.

The five scientists, from Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, and are the first cohort to be funded through the TIBA-AAS Out of Africa Postdoctoral Fellowship programme are:Read more