Research expertise

I'm an epidemiologist studying use of data on risk (hazards, threats, vulnerabilities) to inform infectious disease prevention/control. In low resource settings, healthcare seeking is shifting to private/informal providers, limiting the role of facility-based surveillance to guide control. Control of bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is further complicated by absent diagnostic tools. I apply the use of data on risk, to inform outbreak control or to guide AMR control – respectively my PhD topic and my research focus since joining ITM. Collaborating with multidisciplinary researchers from ITM partner institutions, we created a “community AMR” research network. Initial observational studies quantified antibiotic use and community carriage of resistant bacteria in low-income countries, informing the setup of a multicentre AMR control intervention study (CABU-EICO) and a recently funded OneHealth surveillance project (ALARUM, starting June 2024). I lead work on collaborative surveillance as part of the Belgian Pandemic Intelligence Network (starting December 2023).

Combining my background as a pharmacist with studies in public health and epidemiology, I've worked since 2011 on infectious disease control, since 2015 as epidemiologist. I worked in Guinea on HIV and Ebola, in DR Congo on cholera, yellow fever, and bacterial infections, in Mozambique and Belgium on SARS-CoV-2, in Pakistan on maternal health and hepatitis C, in Syria and Central African Republic on healthcare in an emergencies from conflict, and in France on foodborne and zoonotic disease outbreaks and respiratory infection surveillance.