As the ILEP Technical Commission, selected in late September, meets for the first time in December, we extend a warm welcome to:

Professor Cairns Smith;
Dr Hugh Cross;
Dr Etienne Declercq;
Dr Sunil Deepak;
Dr Augustin Guédénon; and
Dr Wim Van Brakel.

At the same time we welcome back the following two members who sat on the first ILEP Technical Commission:

Professor Diana Lockwood; and
Dr Paul Saunderson.

The Commission plays a vital technical advisory and support role to the ILEP Federation. Professor Cairns Smith is their chairperson and will be leading the members in their tasks throughout their four-year term in office.

On 26th March 2008 a Technical Forum will be held in London. At this consultative meeting the members of the ITC, ILEP Members, officials of the Federation and representatives of the ILEP Secretariat will:

• debate issues of common concern in the field of leprosy;
• consider technical aspects of the Federation's strategy;
• refresh the channels of communication between the ITC and Members' medical advisors; and
  set the work priorities for the ITC.

The priorities identified at this Forum will provide a framework within which the members of the ITC will formulate their programme of work up until the end of 2011.

 

BRIEF WHO'S WHO OF THE ITC MEMBERS

 

Professor Cairns Smith, Chair, ITC

Professor Smith is Professor of Public Health and Head of the Department of Public Health at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He graduated in Aberdeen in 1974 and worked in Glasgow before spending three years working in a leprosy programme in India, work which led to a master's degree. He completed higher training in public health in Dundee, where he gained membership of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine in 1982. He was awarded a PhD for his epidemiological study of coronary heart disease.

Professor Smith's main interests are in chronic disease epidemiology, disabilities and developing countries. He also leads the Leprosy Research Programme at Aberdeen University. In the last decade he has written more than 70 papers on leprosy. Professor Smith has been a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group since 1999 and has recently completed a term as its chairman. ILEP Members and their representatives will recall that Professor Smith previously held chairmanship of the Federation's Medico-Social Commission, 1996-2000.

Dr Hugh Cross

Dr Cross is based in the Philippines as American Leprosy Missions' Regional Consultant for the Prevention of Disability in Asia. This is a varied role encompassing training, programme development, monitoring, evaluation, and research and resource development. He has written numerous articles and chapters for books about prevention of disability including the WHO I Can Do It Myself self-care instruction manual published in the autumn of 2007 and the fourth ILEP Learning Guide about preventing disability. Dr Cross is also extremely interested in issues of empowerment and stigma.

Dr Etienne Declercq

As Medical Advisor to Damien Foundation Belgium Dr Declercq has in-depth knowledge of leprosy and tuberculosis issues faced by the countries in which Damien Foundation Belgium is working: Bangladesh, Botswana, Burundi, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Guatemala, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Rwanda and Vietnam. He has experience of maintaining services in countries living through complex situations and humanitarian crises. He qualified as a medical doctor from the Catholic University of Louvain; thereafter he studied tropical diseases and gained a master's degree in public and social hygiene. An epidemiologist, Dr Declercq is also interested in telematics and shared care. He has worked with the leprologist Prof. Michel Lechat.

Dr Sunil Deepak

With a degree and a master's sociology degree in disability studies, Dr Deepak has been involved in feasibility studies, planning, training and evaluation of many national and sub-national projects dealing with disability in many countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Nepal, Brazil and Guyana. Since January 2001 he has been the Director of the Medical and Scientific Department of the Associazione Italiana Amici di Raoul Follereau. He has co-ordinated training workshops on disability and rehabilitation. Dr Deepak has frequently collaborated with the WHO and is currently co-ordinating a research project for them to find a new paradigm for the medical care of disabled persons.

Dr Augustin Guédénon

Currently Medical Advisor for the Fondation Raoul Follereau, Dr Guédénon has broad experience of leprosy and Buruli ulcer control and programme management in Africa. Dr Guédénon co-ordinated the National Leprosy and Buruli Ulcer Programmes in Benin, considered among the best in Africa, for twelve years. His speciality is dermatology. He helped spearhead the first ten-day intensive training course for National Co-ordinators of Leprosy Control Programmes for francophone African countries in Bamako, Mali, in 2004.

Professor Diana Lockwood

Leprologist and infectious disease physician, Professor Lockwood is also known as the Editor of Leprosy Review, the premier leprosy journal, a post she has held since 1996. She is currently Head of the Clinical Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Professor of Tropical Medicine. Her team is currently researching the molecular aspects of nerve damage in leprosy with the aim of improving outcomes for leprosy patients with nerve damage. She trained in clinical medicine and laboratory science and has worked in leprosy in India, Ethiopia and the United Kingdom. Professor Lockwood is also Consultant Physician and Leprologist at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, providing a national referral service for leprosy patients in Britain. Since the late 1990s Professor Lockwood has carried out various assignments for the WHO. Professor Lockwood has been a member of the Medical Advisory Board of LEPRA Health in Action since 1994. The current term on the ITC will be her second.

Dr Paul Saunderson

Dr Saunderson is also returning to the ITC for a second term. Currently engaged as Medical Consultant to American Leprosy Missions, he has a master's degree in Health, Population and Nutrition. He has experience of managing field programmes and has in-depth knowledge of training, having taught on various courses at ALERT in Ethiopia, for example, and made considerable contributions to ILEP teaching and learning materials, particularly the Learning Guide series. Dr Saunderson is also very interested in prevention of disability across diseases. The WHO entrusted him with writing the first draft of the Operational Guidelines which accompany the current global leprosy strategy valid 2006-2010. Last year he became the part-time Scientific Director of the Leonard Wood Memorial research facility in Cebu, Philippines.

Dr Wim Van Brakel

Leprosy, epidemiology, rehabilitation and prevention of disability, clinimetrics and teaching research methods are Dr Van Brakel's main areas of specialisation. He joined the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam as a Senior Adviser in public health in 2003. He gained a PhD in the epidemiology of peripheral neuropathy in leprosy from the Medical School of the University of Utrecht. He worked in Nepal and India for 17 years for various international NGOs. His experience includes evaluation, the integration of leprosy control into general health services, the use of information technology in public health and the design and management of clinical and field studies. Reactions and neuropathy in leprosy, as well as stigma, figure among Dr Van Brakel's many research interests. He has contributed to over 50 scientific papers, both as author and co-author.

 

Categories: Technical information