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In today’s episode, we discuss genetic research as it pertains to the African genome. Joining us today to talk about this topic is world-renowned geneticist, Ambroise Wonkam. 

Ambroise Wonkam is a Professor of Genetic Medicine and director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Wonkam received medical training from the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Yaoundé I. He completed a thesis in Medical Sciences from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He has also received training as a specialist medical geneticist from the University of Switzerland. 

Professor Wonkam is a well-seasoned researcher, with more than 190 peer-reviewed publications. His research interests hone in on 1) Genomics modifiers of sickle cell disease (SCD); 2) Genetics of hearing loss, and 3) Ethical and educational issues in human genetics in Africa. Over the past 10 years, Prof. Wonkam has successfully led numerous NIH- and Wellcome Trust–funded projects, accounting for about 20 million USD. His research projects span several countries across Africa including Tanzania, Cameroon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Mali, Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana.

Additionally, Professor Wonkam serves as president of the African Society of Human Genetics, the chair of the steering committee of H3 Africa, a board member of the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies, a steering committee member of the Global Genetic Medicine Collaborative (G2MC), and a faculty scholar of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). Furthermore, he is the associate editor of the American Journal of Human Genetics, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, and the Journal of Community Genetics, the academic editor of PLoS One, and a member of the editorial board of Human Genetics.

Links/References:

Five Priorities of African Genomics Research: The Next Frontier

Ambroise Wonkam, Nchangwi S. Munung, Collet Dandara, Kevin K. Esoh, Neil A. Hanchard, Guida Landoure

Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 2022 23:1, 499-521

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-genom-111521-102452 

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This is the first episode of a six-episode series that we will be realising once a month for the next six months. This special series is thankfully supported by the "Promoting Decolonization using innovative knowledge practices" grant hosted by the Center for Tropical Medicine and Global Health of Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Medicine. In these six episodes, we will showcase the contributions of six African global health leaders.

Our first guest in this series is Raoul Kamadjeu, a physician, co-founder, and managing editor of the Pan African Medical Journal. He is driven in all his projects by a simple motto - Start small, but think big! He got his doctorate in Medicine in Cameroon and completed his MPH in Belgium (Université Libre de Bruxelles). He experienced the broad spectrum of public health practice, from the district in Cameroon to international arenas with the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He worked with the CDC from 2004 to 2006 as Public Health Informatics Fellow and from 2007 to 2014 as a medical epidemiologist. He currently works for UNICEF HQ (Public Health Emergencies) and is a Ph.D. candidate (Epidemiology), with the City University of New York (CUNY), Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. His expertise spans fields as varied as epidemiology, biostatistics, informatics, communication, computer programming, and project management.



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Welcome back to a new year and a new season of global health unfiltered! Thank you to all the fans who tuned in last year and continue to listen in. One of the goals of the show is to highlight African global health leaders who are leading public health initiatives on the continent and we have just one such leader to open our season. We are so excited to have host Prof. Salome Maswime, joining us from Cape Town South Africa. 

Salome Maswime is Professor and the Head of Global Surgery at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She trained as an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and is the President of the South African Clinician Scientists Society. She was the Discovery MGH research fellow in 2018 at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a former lecturer at the Wits University.  Salome is from Limpopo province, South Africa. After qualifying as a medical doctor at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Maswime completed a Fellowship and a Masters in Medicine degree in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and a PhD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She has worked in various hospitals in South Africa, including the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg for approximately 10 years.

She is a global surgery expert with significant research contributions on access to quality obstetrics care in Ghana. She is an advocate for women’s health rights, and equity in surgical and maternal care. She is an advisor and consultant to several institutions, including the World Health Organization and the Global Surgery Foundation. She has received numerous awards for her tenacity and commitment to maternal health, and for ongoing research in maternal health.

Relevant Readings
Improving surgical and medical outcomes, beyond maternal mortality

Follow Prof. Maswime on Twitter: @MrsMaswime

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Audio editing and social media marketing: Diana Nkhoma

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Welcome to the final episode of our first season. In this episode, Ulrick converses with Dr. Yap Boum about the importance of identifying and supporting African solutions and innovations to global health challenges. They discuss lessons on African innovation during covid-19, the importance of African-led research, and a new innovation called The Village.

Professor Yap Boum II is the Executive Director of the Institute Pasteur of Bangui in Central Africa Republic and the former Regional Representative for Epicentre in Africa, the research arm of Medécins sans Frontieres (MSF). He has implemented several studies on tuberculosis, malaria, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Ebola, COVID-19 in Uganda, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon among others. Boum teaches Public Health and Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology (Uganda) where he has a professorship and at the Universities of Virginia (UVa) and the University ofYaoundé I (Cameroon). He has held an array of leadership and advisory positions on national and international scales. Presently, Boum serves on the International Editorial Board of The Lancet Global Health. Boum is also co-founder of Kmerpad, a nonprofit that developed washable sanitary pads to empower women, allow them to fully participate in their education, and to limit the waste generated by the use of non-reusable sanitary pads. He has also a co-founder of iDocta, a digital platform that takes healthcare services to the community. He recently started Homegrown Solutions for Africa (HS4Africa) which aims to promote the creation of a critical mass of young Africans to find homegrown and innovative solutions for addressing the social and public health challenges Africa's faces. The Village digital platform is the new development of HS4Africa that will brake the barriers and connect scientists to transform Global Health As an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow, Boum is inspired by the vision of a healthy and wealthy Africa.

Relevant readings:

1. Who is telling the story? A systematic review of authorship for infectious disease research conducted in Africa, 1980–2016
2. Is Africa part of the partnership?
3. Advancing equitable global health research partnerships in Africa

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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe

Audio editing and social media marketing: Yvan Zolo

Theme music: Antidote by Ketsa

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Welcome, everyone. In this episode, we discuss how global health conference locations influence power dynamics and representation.

Unfortunately, global health conference locations serve as an uncharacteristic, perennial, and highly effective gatekeeping mechanism. 

This “Berlin wall” keeps low- and middle-income country (LMIC) researchers outside global health decision rooms allowing LMIC researchers to face numerous challenges in attending these events, notably visas and costs. 

Our co-host, Ulrick Sidney Kanmounye, has encountered these challenges, and he shared his experience in a BMJ op-ed and co-authored a BMJ article exploring LMIC representations at global health conferences.

Readings:

Read Ulrick’s articles:  Visas for global health events—too many are losing their seat at the table and Conference equity in global health: a systematic review of factors impacting LMIC representation at global health conferences.

Follow Ulrick Sidney Kanmounye on Twitter: @ulricksidney

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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe

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Theme music: Antidote by Ketsa

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Welcome to our tenth episode!! Many have expressed deep frustrations about the lack of representation of people from the "Global South" on decision-making tables including decisions around research priority, programs, policies, and funding. Our guest today shares her experience and opinions on the matter. Lazenya Weekes-Richemond worked in global health for 14 years before deciding to leave her career in global health. As a black woman working on behalf of black and brown people in a predominantly white-led sector, Lazenya’s work now focuses on disrupting the status quo, calling out neo-colonial practices within international development, and offering solutions to redress power imbalances and inequities. She seizes every opportunity to bring attention to health disparities affecting black and brown populations. We are glad that she has seized this opportunity to come on the Global Health Unfiltered Podcast to share her perspective on how to address power imbalances in global health. 
 
Readings:
Read Lazenya's blog here:
Why I left my career in Global Health, Plos blogs, 29th March 2022
Connect with Lazenya: rethinkingglobalhealth.com

Follow Lazenya Weekes-Richemond on Twitter: @LazenyaR

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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe
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Infectious diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV remain major causes of death and disability in Africa accounting for about 1.2 million deaths every year in Africa. By 2050, it is estimated that up to 4 million deaths could occur on the continent due to emergent infectious pathogens and increasing antimicrobial resistance. The covid-19 pandemic has revealed uncomfortable realities about the state of public health institutions in Africa. This reality led Dr. John Nkengasong, the then Director of the Africa CDC to declare that “in order to secure its future and guarantee its development, Africa will need a new public health order to address infectious disease threats and the overall syndemic in the 21st century”. In this episode, we talk about this New Public Health Order for Africa with two global health experts who have written extensively on this topic, Dr. Ebere Okereke and Sheila Mburu from the Tony Blair Institute.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Please subscribe and share with your friends and family. We apologize for the quality of the sound at certain parts of the interview. These were primarily due to poor internet connectivity. We will continue to work to improve the quality of our productions for your enjoyment.  Thank you! 
 
Readings:
Read Ebere and Sheila's articles
A New Public-Health Order for Africa: What and why?
A New Public-Health Order for Africa: Why Public-Health Institutions Are the Foundations of Strong Health Systems


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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe
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In this episode, we discuss words. Not just any words but words we use in global health to classify countries and people. Words like global North, global South, HIC, LMIC, developing and developed countries, first and third world. If you work in global health on international development, chances are that you have used at least one or several of those terms. But these terms that we use to classify countries and people carry with them certain assumptions and implications. Our guest is Themrise Khan, an independent development professional, and researcher with over 25 years of practitioner and policy-based experience in international development, aid effectiveness, gender, and global migration. She has co-authored an editorial in BMJ-Global Health called "How we classify countries and people—and why it matters". We spoke with her about the various terms we use to classify people and their implications for global health and international development.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Please subscribe and share with your friends and family. We apologize for the quality of the sound at certain parts of the interview, these were primarily due to poor internet connectivity. We will continue to work to improve the quality of our productions for you. 

Readings:
Read Themrise's editorial: https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/6/e009704

Follow Themrise on Twitter: @Themrise

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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe
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"Every narration places the spectator in a position of agency" - Manthia Diawara

In this episode, we discuss equity in global health research with Dr. Seye Abimbola. Seye is a senior lecturer at the University of Sidney and editor-in-chief of BMJ Global Health. He is an advocate for the decolonization of global health and has written and spoken extensively on the subject globally. We discuss, among other things, the definition of global health, the problem of gaze and pose, global health funding, building research capacity locally and advice for young global health researchers. 

We hope you enjoy this episode. Please subscribe and share with your friends and family. 

Readings
Abimbola S. The foreign gaze: authorship in academic global health. BMJ Global Health
https://gh.bmj.com/content/4/5/e002068

Abimbola, S., & Pai, M. (2020). Will global health survive its decolonisation?. Lancet (London, England), 396(10263), 1627-1628. 
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32417-X/fulltext


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Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe
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Every year, 1.3 million people die from road traffic accidents and millions more are injured. Despite having only about 60% of the global vehicle fleet, low and middle-income countries account for 93% of all deaths from road traffic accidents. Designing roads that take into account safety can prevent road crashes and save lives. In this episode, we discuss why many roads in Africa often do not take into account all aspects of safety and what can be done to change this. Our guest is Etta Madete, a Nairobi based human-centerd design Architect at BuildXStudio and also an avid road safty design advocate. She was recently featured in a BBC Africa Eye document about "Kenya's Killer Road". 

Etta Madete on BBC Africa Eye: https://youtu.be/papUXpLXf8I 
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Contact us: [email protected] 

Artwork: Chidiebere Ibe
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