Sanie Sesay

University

Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme.

PhD Title

Evaluation of different indices for monitoring temporal changes in malaria transmission and disease burden in Malawi: The EvalMal study.

Abstract

Current up-scaling of malaria control efforts across sub-Saharan Africa is resulting in substantial and rapid reductions of malaria transmission in areas where high intervention coverage is achieved. Once malaria transmission declines, further reduction will require much more targeted sub-national or district-level efforts in the remaining pockets, as the current national household surveys will no longer be suitable. Alternative or complementary, cost-effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tools are urgently needed. One potential approach is surveillance of quasi-populations like so-called easy-access groups (EAGs).

This method samples individuals who are logistically accessible for surveillance and are relatively representative of the underlying population at risk of malaria, such as young children attending Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) vaccination clinics, or pregnant women attending Antenatal Care (ANC) clinic. My Ph.D. research work is on the evaluation of such quasi-populations as an innovative and potentially cost-effective tool to monitor trends in malaria transmission and uptake of control interventions at district level.

Background

I am a qualified general (family) physician. I have four years of work experience with the Government Health Service. I have also worked for almost six years with the Medical Research Council (UK) in The Gambia; mainly in the field of clinical trials and malaria epidemiology.