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About the speaker

Dr Vaz Nery is a Research Fellow in the Global Health Division, RSPH. She has a multidisciplinary background, combining degrees and experience in biochemistry, neurosciences, health policy and international development, and field epidemiology. She moved to Canberra in April 2015, after being based in Timor-Leste for almost 3 years. Prior to her affiliation with ANU she has also lived and worked in Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, The Gambia, and Tanzania. Her current research interests are malaria and NTDs’ control and elimination in developing countries. Particularly she is interested in intervention studies that can inform health policy changes for more effective and sustainable disease control strategies. She is currently overseeing a program of research being implemented in Timor-Leste, that includes STH control, dengue spatial epidemiology and drug prescription patterns.

Abstract

The CISA Project aims to create a health research centre in Caxito, Northern Angola, and is the result of an agreement between the Portuguese and Angolan Governments, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Between 2009 and mid-2012, I was responsible for the coordination of the scientific activities of the project, overseeing a team of up to 11 international and over 50 total staff. I will describe the creation of such a centre and will present the scientific outputs after 3 years. These include establishing longitudinal platforms essential for collection of routine data with good quality (a health and demographic surveillance system of over 60 000 people, a verbal autopsy system, and a paediatric clinical surveillance system), as well as observational studies describing the local epidemiology of infectious (malaria, schistosomiasis, soil transmitted helminthiasis and diarrhoea) and non-communicable diseases (hypertension).