Online event - Trachoma: Accelerating progress to elimination as a public health problem
Sightsavers and the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH) are holding an online event on 23 January 2024 to share and discuss learnings around how to eliminate the infectious eye disease trachoma.
The event, which will take place from 2PM – 4PM GMT, will share the findings from a new collection of research papers – 'Trachoma: Accelerating progress to elimination as a public health problem' in the RSTMH journal International Health. You can read the research supplement here.
The event will focus on two topics:
- How governments and their partners can use innovative approaches to speed up the elimination of trachoma
- How to address advanced trachoma (known as ‘trichiasis’) in affected communities
Speakers will be sharing the latest insights from major trachoma initiatives such as the Accelerate and Tropical Data programmes, and attendees will have the opportunity to discuss these during a series of Q&A sessions.
This collection of papers is the last to be published as part of a three-year partnership, in which RSTMH has used its scientific journals and other communications channels to help disseminate the key outputs and learnings from Sightsavers’ lead programmes.
Speakers
- Gilbert Baayenda is a distinguished public health professional with 22 years of experience, currently serving as the Senior Trachoma Advisor at the Fred Hollows Foundation
- Rachel Golan is the Head of Research at NALA and adjunct researcher at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev
- Sheila West is a professor at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University
- Michael Kirumba is Deputy Director of Accelerate, a Sightsavers global programme whose objective is to accelerate elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in 14 African countries
- Grace Mwangi is a Programme Monitoring, Impact, and Quality Assurance Lead at Peek Vision and a Public Health Researcher specializing in eye health
- Christian Nwosu is a Public Health Practitioner with over 15 years’ experience working in NTDs.
- Simon Bush is Director of NTDs at Sightsavers and Past President of RSTMH.
- Paul Courtright is a professor (adjunct) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, founder and current Chair of the Board for the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology
- Caleb Mpyet is professor of ophthalmology at the University of Jos, Nigeria.
- Michaela Kelly is the trachoma programme director at Sightsavers.
- Tamar Ghosh is RSTMH Chief Executive.