Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development

AIGHD has a proud tradition of showcasing the best ongoing research in global health and development. Each Friday during the academic term, AIGHD fellows, students, and visitors gather to listen to speakers and then pepper them with questions. The latest series commenced last week in our new home at the Amsterdam UMC with PhD fellow Maya Ronse discussing her leprosy research in the Comoros. This was preceded by a special welcome from the AIGHD program lead, Prof. Constance Schultz.   Coming up:  18 September: Frederick Murunga Wekesah, PhD (African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC))  📌“Global health through an equity lens: Reframing implementation and collaboration around who is reached, and who is left behind” 25 September: Eduard Sanders (The Aurum Institute)  📌“From trials to impact: Advancing #HIV prevention in Africa" 2 October: Kwasi Boahene (PharmAccess):   📌“The price of staying alive: Africa's unfinished #universalhealthcoverage bet.” 23 October: Pearl Aovare 📌"Impact assessment of community empowerment and mobile health technology on #diabetes and #hypertension patient care management in southern #Ghana."   Comment to receive an invitation! (You can attend online too.)

🎓 '𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗱𝗼𝗺𝘀 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘃𝗹𝗲𝗸 - 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝗖𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘀 On Friday, October 30, 2026, at 16:30, Frank Cobelens, Professor of Global Health at Amsterdam UMC and former program leader of APH Global Health, will deliver his farewell lecture, marking his transition to emeritus status. “That we haven’t cracked the global tuberculosis problem says as much about its complexity as about the world’s willingness to invest in it. Yet failing has taught us a lot.“ - Frank Cobelens After a distinguished career largely devoted to combating infectious diseases worldwide, he will guide the audience one last time through the key developments and milestones of his work. 📅 Friday, October 30, 2026 🕓 16:30 Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development Amsterdam UMC - Amsterdam institute for Immunology and Infectious Diseases Read more ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eBhmfg4u

Improving healthcare quality saves lives. Can it also help facilities grow and become more financially sustainable? That's the question behind an independent study led by Professor Wendy Janssens, Professor in Development Economics at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), joint with econometrician Dr Daniëlla Brals (Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development) and medical doctor and Senior Scientific Advisor, Dr Patricia Gómez Pérez, MD, MPH, PhD (PharmAccess Foundation). The study looked at data from 483 public and private healthcare facilities in the SafeCare programme across Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Nigeria, examining whether improvements in SafeCare quality scores were associated with increases in patient visits and staff numbers, used here as signs of how a facility's business is doing. Facilities that improved their quality scores the most also saw larger increases in patient visits and staff numbers, suggesting that investing in quality can strengthen patient confidence, encourage greater use of healthcare services, and support the growth of health facilities over time. The reverse may also be true: facilities with better business performance may simply have more room to invest in quality. The study also found that these associations were most evident among facilities that had already reached higher levels of quality. Facilities starting from lower quality levels often required more time and additional support before experiencing similar gains. This is where the findings reinforce the value of our stepwise quality improvement approach, and underscore the importance of targeted investments, innovative financing mechanisms, and public-private partnerships to help lower-performing facilities strengthen quality, expand access to care, and better serve their communities across sub-Saharan Africa. Link to the study in the comments.

She estimated that more than half a million children died in the year after US foreign aid was abruptly cut in early 2025. Now media organisation NPR has tracked down three of the families affected. Abdullahi Ibrahim (10) died from asthma in Nigeria. Sixteen-year-old Purity Wamboi from Kenya contracted tuberculosis. Ibrahim Garba (8), also from Nigeria, didn't survive typhoid.    Senior AIGHD fellow Brooke Nichols set up the Impact Counter to project the number of likely deaths after the US government gutted its USAID agency last year.   "It's one thing to turn something off," Nichols is quoted in the article. "It is something entirely different to turn something back on again."     🔗Read the NPR story by following the link in the comments.

Oral polio and rotavirus vaccines protect only 45–57% of the children receiving them in areas of sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. In high-income countries, this figure is 85–98%. Why the big discrepancy? Different gut microbiomes, in short. Three AIGHD fellows set out potential solutions in an article published in Cell Host & Microbe by Cell Press. Research fellow Vanessa Harris, senior fellow Godelieve De Bree and PhD fellow Jongchan Kim argue for a shift from probiotic supplementation to microbially derived therapeutics that bypasses the unpredictability of colonization. Find the link to the full paper in Vanessa’s post below.

💡 𝗟𝗖𝗛𝗟 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗿. 𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝘇𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗗 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 On 3 July 2026, the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) hosted its fellows event at the Universiteit van Amsterdam on the equity gap in Digital Health solutions. The event started with a keynote from Prof. Tarun Katapally (DEPtH Lab Western University, Canada). His talk, ‘𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘮? 𝘋𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 & 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘨𝘢𝘱’, challenged the idea that digital health alone can solve the growing pressures on healthcare systems. Instead, he argued that when access to technology, digital skills and resources is unequal, digital health can also reinforce existing health inequities.     LCHL researcher Dr. James Hazel responded with a legal perspective on health data governance, highlighting that equity is not only a design issue but also a governance issue: questions of data ownership, control, and accountability are central to achieving fair and equal health outcomes. This AIGHD Fellows event was organised with the support of Universiteit van Amsterdam - Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid (LCHL) and Social and Behavioural Sciences (Centre for Social Science and Global Health (SSGH)). Anniek de Ruijter Katrina Perehudoff Floor Bennebroek Isabel Benedict Bregje de Kok Zongtian Guo Charles Agyemang Daniëlla Brals Constance Schultsz Anim van Wyk    Read more ➡️ https://lnkd.in/estizqEq

TARGET will help us understand whether antibiotics can benefit children with watery diarrhea and malnutrition. Honored to be working with Richard Omore and Benson Singa, with Ben Ochieng at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) alongside Estomih Mduma and sifaeli Katengu with Saning'o Lukumay at the Haydom Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania and their wonderful teams who are leading this important clinical trial and jointly enrolling 2,800 children at their sites. And TARGET is lucky to benefit from the experience of Patricia Pavlinac at University of Washington. Beyond the trial itself, TARGET will use modeling to assess the benefits of antibiotics across geographies under future climate pressures 🌍. This work will be led by Habiba Mtongori at the Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA) together with Josh Colston at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. We will weigh the risk of developing antimicrobial resistance #AMR against the benefits of antibiotic therapy 💊. James Platts-Mills and Stephanie Brennhofer at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Elizabeth Rogawski McQuade at Emory University, together with the teams at Haydom Lutheran Hospital and Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) will evaluate stool-based biomarkers and modeling to identify which children are most likely to benefit from targeted ⚖️ antibiotic therapy. To best inform policy guidelines and ensure implementation of study results into clinical practice 🌱, Doris Mbata at National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) - Tanzania working with Christopher Pell at the Amsterdam UMC and the team at Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) will study current practices for the treatment of diarrheal disease in vulnerable infants in Tanzania and Kenya. Chloe Chavardes and the wonderful team 🌟at Three o'clock will support translation of this study's results into policy and practice. TARGET is supported by Global Health EDCTP3 and its members, and co-funded by the European Union. 🔗 Read the full press release: https://lnkd.in/edMmWCZ7 #GlobalHealth #ClinicalTrial #ChildHealth #AMR #EDCTP3

Starting today: a €5.8 million trial to prevent malnourished children with diarrhoea from ending up in hospital or dying. Dubbed TARGET, the project is one of four that AIGHD coordinates or participates in and which were funded in the latest annual round of the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP). “We know that children with malnutrition are extra vulnerable to infections and more often have bacterial causes of diarrhoea,” said Dr Vanessa Harris, who leads TARGET with Dr Richard Omore from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). World Health Organization guidelines currently do not recommend antibiotics for children with acute watery diarrhoea. This study will help identify groups of children who may benefit from antibiotic therapy, weighed against the risk of antimicrobial resistance. Also starting is a project to prevent people who completed #tuberculosis (TB) treatment from falling ill again. “If someone has had one episode of TB, they are more at risk of getting a second,” explained principal investigator Dr Sabine Hermans. The RECENT-TB project (a €2.4 million grant) will see a trial of preventive antibiotics implemented for people who have just completed TB treatment in specific high-burden neighbourhoods in #Uganda and #SouthAfrica. The project represents a partnership with the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at Makerere University in Uganda and the Clinical Mycobacteriology and Epidemiology (CLIME) group at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The two other projects AIGHD will contribute to are focused on training and mentorship in sub-Saharan Africa: * Eastern Africa Consortium for Clinical Research IV aims to build capacity for research on epidemics and outbreaks common to East Africa. * Infectious Disease Modelling will establish a training hub to help reduce the critical shortage of modellers in sub-Saharan Africa. AIGHD has been a key recipient of EDCTP funding since our inception in 2009, completing several high-impact research projects.

How can we spot the next global pandemic faster?   Traditional systems rely on reports of people falling ill, often missing cases silently spreading in communities. A new approach uses mobile labs to screen wastewater and surface runoff for a broad range of germs.   This kind of environmental surveillance can revolutionise outbreak detection in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s the topic of a new publication in Lancet Microbe from our colleagues at the ODIN Wastewater Surveillance Project, featuring #EpiGenEthiopia co-authors Tobias Rinke de Wit, Dawit Wolday, and Mohammed Ahmed Rameto.   More than just a technical milestone, by utilising environmental data, African nations can: • Improve detection in areas with little sanitation infrastructure, • Maintain data ownership and sovereignty when outside governments push for access to human health data, • Survey pathogens in real time without the delays of paper-based clinical registries.   This collaboration is part of the #GenEpiNetwork initiative (coordinated by Lauren Fromont from the EpiGen side) and funded by the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).   Congratulations to the entire team! #Metagenomics #WastewaterSurveillance #GlobalHealthEDCTP3 📸: Courtesy of ODIN