IFHAD Trainees

  • Dr. Antonio Bernabe   is a Peruvian Physician obtaining his MPH at the Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Peru. He is working with us on a project determining the accuracy of weight change in predicting MDR-TB and treatment outcome.
  • Dr. Antonino Curatola   is a Peruvian Physician working with us to investigate the predictors of household TB transmission from patients to contacts.
  • Christopher Chew   is a medical student at Cambridge University who received a    Wellcome Trust Prize Grant to work in Peru improving the sensitivity of TB diagnosis by microscopy. He left Peru in 2006, and is now completing his medical studies.
  • Dr. Rod Escombe   is currently completing the research from his Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship and successful PhD project through Imperial College   London (UK). He has been working with us on this project, in which he is investigating   airborne TB transmission and evaluating strategies to prevent TB from being transmitted from patients to contacts.    Dr. Escombe’s outstanding work has led to several published papers and increasing implementation of his research.
  • Dr. Ai Koyanagi   is a Japanese Physician who worked with us in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . Dr Koyanagi had a longstanding interest in nutritional modulation of TB susceptibility, having researched and published in this field previously.    Dr Koyanagi spent a year working full-time with the ‘Determinants of TB Susceptibility’ project team in Peru , characterizing the effect of in vitro micronutrient supplementation on antimycobacterial immunity, analyzing the cytokine profiles from the samples that she collected.   She is now continuing her TB nutrition research in Africa.
  • Dr. Alejandro Necochea   is a   Peruvian physician who worked with us for a year while obtaining his MD at Yale University (USA). His work focused on    the effects of micronutrients on mycobacterial killing. Dr. Necochea received his MD in 2004, and is now completing his medical specialization.
  • Dr. Dami Onifade   from I mperial College in London received a Wellcome Trust Elective Prize Grant to work in Peru. She characterized gender issues in TB susceptibility, working with our field team and micronutrient supplementation trial population, building on existing IFHAD infrastructure.    Dr. Onifade left Peru in 2006, although the work that she initiated continues.
  • Louise Pealing & Sarah Eisen   were funded by a British Wellcome Trust prize to perform a project characterizing the effects of altitude on antimycobacterial immunity.    They presented this research at   National and International conferences,   and they are now completing their specialist medical training in England.
  • Dr. Tom Pelly   is a   British junior doctor who performed a one-year project that characterized nutritional determinants of susceptibility to latent TB, leading to two publications. Dr. Pelly is now specializing in primary health care.
  • Dr. Gurj Sandhu   is a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellow and PhD student at   Imperial College in London (UK). In collaboration with IFHAD and Dr. Dan Agranoff at Imperial College,    he is   characterizing proteomic signatures in TB, which we hope can be used to identify proteins that might be of utility in TB diagnosis or prognosis. Dr. Sandhu arrived in Peru in January 2006, and is integrating his exciting work with that of IFHAD, building on existing infrastructure and samples obtained in our micronutrient studies.
  • Dr. Giselle Soto   is a Peruvian Physician obtaining her   MPH at the Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Peru. She is working with us on a project characterising the early clinical features of TB treatment response associated with subsequent treatment failure.
  • Dr. Marco Tovar   is a Peruvian Paediatrician working on his Masters in Health Policy    at the Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Peru. His project   concerns long-term outcome of patients with antibiotic-resistant TB who were apparently cured by sub-optimal first-line therapy.
  • Dr. Carlos Vidal   is a Peruvian physician who worked with us to obtain his MPH from the University of Loreto (Peru). His research focused on characterizing   the effect of zinc supplementation on antimycobacterial immunity, leading to two publications. Dr. Vidal received his MPH in 2005, and is now working full-time in public health in Loreto in Peru.
  • Dr. Karine Zevallos   is a Peruvian Physician working on her   MPH Student at the Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Peru. Her project focuses on the effect of parasitic co-infections on TB susceptibility following exposure.

In addition to the above trainees, we have trained many local   health promoters, nurses, physicians, administrators and laboratory technicians. Many continue to work with us, while others have used the valuable experience they gained at IFHAD to move forward in their careers.