Advisors

Eric van Praag has over 30 years of public health, clinical and epidemiological expertise in resource constrained countries. From 2004- 2010 as  Country Director  FHI Tanzania, he supported the Ministry of Health and numerous NGOs and CBOs in the scaling up of comprehensive HIV programs  across a continuum of community- and facility-based care. Since 2011 as a Regional Technical Advisor based in Tanzania  the focus has been on planning and monitoring in several sub Saharan countries addressing integration and sustainability issues of HIV, TB/HIV, reproductive child health and FP programs at facility and community level and as well innovations such as differentiated care to achieve better results.

From 1991-2000, he coordinated HIV clinical and home care activities at WHO, Geneva. From 1988-1991 he worked in Lusaka, Zambia as WHO-GPA Team leader supporting the national response  to start up their HIV Program.

Between 1982-1985 he worked with the Ministry of Public Health in Bangladesh as a bilateral expert for disease control and paramedical training.  His first experience with tropical public health in Tanzania 1974-1982 at various hospitals and as a senior lecturer Community Health  University of Dar es Salaam. He has extensive experience and knowledge of health systems strengthening, infectious diseases i.e. HIV, TB, STI in Africa with a key interest in linking biomedical innovations into existing health systems.

Professor John MacDermot is a retired physician, who now spends some of his time teaching medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the past, he held a chair in medicine and therapeutics and served as the head of undergraduate medicine at Imperial College London. He is engaged also as an honorary medical adviser to the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET).

Myles is Visiting Professor (International Relations) at King’s College London and Associate Professor at the University of Exeter. He was Head of the British Development Division in Eastern Africa; coordinated the 1997 British Government White Paper on international development; represented the UK on the Board of the World Bank; was British Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union; and was Head of Secretariat to the Commission for Africa in 2004-2005.

He is and has been on the Boards of a number of international NGOs and Foundations, including the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET), where he is now Honorary Advisor. His book ‘Aid and Development: A Brief Introduction’ was published by OUP in 2015.

He was made Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2021 for his long service to international development.

Andrew is a Consultant in Public Health and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton Academic Unit of Primary Care and Population Sciences, Faculty of Medicine.

He trained as a doctor in Cambridge and London. After various clinical training posts, he spent ten years in Africa, including six years working for the Government of Malawi as a district and then regional health officer. He returned to the UK in 1992 to complete specialist training in public health in Southampton, having previously qualified as a GP.

He has worked in the area since then and was the City’s Director of Public Health for fourteen years. His main interests are child health, public health intelligence, cardiovascular disease prevention and tackling health inequalities.

Since stepping down as Director of Public Health in 2016 Andrew has been working with Dr Yoseph Mamo and Professor David Phillips on the non-communicable diseases programme in Ethiopia.

Dr Prevett has worked for University Hospital Southampton since June 1998. He has over ten years of experience as a consultant, diagnosing and managing general neurology and epilepsy.

Dr Prevett is also a lecturer on a diploma in tropical medicine course, for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr Mliga is a medical graduate of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and has specialised in public health (MPH) at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and health personnel education (MHPEd.) at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

He began his career as a general practitioner and trainer of clinical officers and later joined the Centre for Educational Development in Health at Arusha (CEDHA). Where he subsequently became the founding director of the Primary Health Care Institute, Iringa Tanzania.

From 1995 until 2012, Dr Mliga was the director of human resources for health development at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of the United Republic of Tanzania.

He is currently part of a team of consultants forming the consortium Praxis for Social Systems Development based at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He joined THET as a health adviser in December 2016

David Phillips is Professor of Endocrine and Metabolic Programming at the University of Southampton, UK. He is also an Honorary Consultant Physician in Endocrinology and Diabetes for the Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust. He trained at the University of Cambridge and St Thomas’ Hospital, London, and following junior hospital appointments was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship at the University of Southampton, where he completed a PhD thesis on the epidemiology of thyroid disease. This work subsequently took him to Zaïre, Central Africa, where he carried out a trial of iodine supplementation on behalf of the UK Charity, OXFAM.

On his return he was appointed Lecturer in Endocrinology at the University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff. He was appointed to his current position in 1991. In Southampton his research programme has centred on the developmental origins of type 2 diabetes, the metabolic syndrome and related conditions. The work has been funded by the Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, The National Institutes of Health and several UK-based charities.

He has collaborated extensively with research groups in other universities both in the UK and abroad and holds professorial appointments at the University of Toronto, Canada, and The University of Adelaide, South Australia. In recent years he has developed an interest in the neglected non-communicable diseases prevalent in rural sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia.