Date: Thursday, 31 March 2022
Time: 13h00 – 14h00
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Presentations:

Monthly report on data from excess deaths in South Africa
Debbie Bradshaw & Pamela Groenewald, Burden of Diseases Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council (South Africa)

EDCTP ethics and regulatory systems capacity development in sub-Saharan Africa
Thomas Nyirenda, EDCTP Strategic Partnerships & Capacity Development Manager (South Africa)

Biographies:

Debbie Bradshaw
Prof. Bradshaw trained as a biostatistician and completed her doctorate at Oxford University. During her career as a researcher, she has developed expertise in epidemiology and demography. She has published extensively and led the first national burden of disease study. She is committed to improving the use of data for decision-making and has provided technical support to the National Department of Health and the World Health Organisation. Her main research interests are mortality profiles, health transition and inequalities in health. She co-heads the South African WHO-FIC and is an honorary Professor in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

Pam Groenewald
Dr Groenewald trained in medicine at Stellenbosch University and after a few years of practicing clinical medicine she worked in the pharmacology department at UCT for a few years where she became interested in the management of drug-resistant TB. In 1991, she joined the TB unit of SAMRC and worked in drug-resistant TB surveillance. She subsequently completed a MPhil (Public Health) at UWC. Since 2001 she has worked part-time in the Burden of Disease Research Unit setting up a local mortality surveillance system in the Western Cape as well as training doctors in medical certification of cause of death. She is also working on the National Burden of Disease and Comparative risk assessment studies with a focus on the smoking attributable burden.

Thomas Nyirenda
Dr Nyirenda is Strategic Partnerships and Capacity Development Manager of EU-Africa programme called European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP). He is a public health physician and research scientist with over 26 years’ experience of working in sub-Saharan Africa in control, prevention and clinical research for infectious diseases. He trained in Medicine at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), St Mary’s Hospital (London), and College of Medicine of Malawi. He did his Public Health training at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Before joining EDCTP in 2004, he worked as a District Health Officer and Tuberculosis National Research Officer for the Ministry of Health in Malawi and later as a Medical Officer for the World Health Organisation (WHO) within the Stop TB Department in Geneva before moving to the WHO Country Office in Malawi. His contribution to TB control included participation in establishing an operational research progamme with the Malawi National TB Control Programme for TB/HIV control in pre-ARV era and as WHO medical officer for DOTS research projects in African countries.

In his early years at EDCTP, he was a TB projects focal person for the organisation. He has published 1 book chapter and over 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals. His role in teaching has included moderation of MSc studentship courses at the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), Honorary Lectureship of Public Health at College of Medicine of the University of Malawi, and he is currently Extraordinary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health of University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). Besides his current role at EDCTP, he is also the chairperson for the Africa Academy of Sciences Advisory Board on Clinical Trials Capacity Data Base programme (CTC) and represents EDCTP (in both official and personal capacity) on several committees such as the NEPAD AMRH/AVAREF, African CDC Task Force on COVID-19, Global COVID-19 Coalition, and the Global Burden of Disease of Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.