Please join us for this exciting event hosted jointly by ICHG and ISSOP to mark World TB Day 2024!
We have two fantastic speakers lined up for you who will be discussing their work and sharing their insights into the current status of global efforts to end the TB epidemic, remaining challenges to be addressed and future opportunities to improve TB prevention, management and equitable access to services.
Please click on the zoom link below to join the seminar:
https://lshtm.zoom.us/j/97484962322?pwd=QTU2U2N3aWZZTGxnYUJKeFl4dkNidz09
Meeting ID: 974 8496 2322
Password: 420594
Speaker info:
Dr Toyin Togun is an Associate Professor of Global Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), London, UK, and a clinician-scientist in the Vaccines & Immunity Theme at the MRC Unit The Gambia at the LSHTM (MRCG at LSHTM).
He is the Co-Director of the LSHTM Tuberculosis (TB) Centre, and he is also elected to Fellowship of the UK Faculty of Public Health.Dr. Togun’s research interest is in global health and implementation research that is focused on the discovery and practical application of new tools and strategies to improve the diagnosis and management of TB in high burden settings, with particular interest in childhood tuberculosis.
Currently, he is the Work Package Leader for childhood TB within the EDCTP-funded West African Network of Excellence for TB, AIDS and Malaria (WANETAM) consortium, and he led a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)-supported project that has established a multi-country and inter-disciplinary platform for research on post-TB lung health in children and adolescents in West Africa. He is a member of the College of Experts of the Africa Research Excellence Fund (AREF) and of the Child and Adolescents TB Working Group of the World Health Organization.
Dr Samuel Chirwa is a TB and HIV Fellow in Malawi supporting the HIV/AIDS biomedical response under the umbrella government-to-government (G2G) cooperative agreement (CoAg) between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Malawi Ministry of Health (MoH).
His work at the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Elimination Programme (NTLEP) under the Care, Treatment and Research Office includes routine activities such as supervision and mentorship, as well as coordinating and implementing NTLEP operational research projects in five districts across Malawi namely Karonga, Kasungu, Mchinji, Mulanje and Thyolo. The research projects involve: examining factors affecting tuberculosis preventive therapy coverage among people living with HIV in Kasungu district; prevalence of TB among tea estate employees in Thyolo and Mulanje districts; prevalence of TB and risk factors among contacts of TB index cases and prevalence in Mchinji district; and finally, the distribution and factors contributing to Mycobacterium Other Than Tuberculosis (MOTT) among presumptive TB patients in Karonga district.
Dr Chirwa has supported NTLEP policy development addressing TB prevention policies with a focus on TB preventive therapy (TPT) and pediatric TB. He has also supported capacity building in the pediatric TB space by developing pediatric TB training packages aligned with updated global guidance on TB and adapted for the Malawian setting. He has also worked with TB implementing partners (IPs) Infectious Disease Surveillance and Detection (IDDS) supported by USAID in successfully piloting innovative pediatric TB diagnostics using stool samples, and successfully piloted artificial intelligence–based chest x-ray technologies for TB diagnosis with TB Local Organization Network projects (TBLON-1) supported by USAID.