Improving paediatric treatments in Africa

Clinical trials may devise better treatments, but only by working with the hospitals implementing those treatments can researchers monitor their effectiveness in practice. By monitoring the care routinely given to children, we can identify treatments that work and those needing improvement, whether assessing the effectiveness of a malaria vaccine, or prescriptions for diarrhoea and dehydration or other severe illnesses.

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I am a Clinical Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Health Services Unit, KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Programme, Nairobi, supported by IDeAL and a Visiting Research Fellow, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. I am a consultant paediatrician with Dphil in Clinical Medicine from the University Of Oxford, UK. My PhD studies investigated haemodynamic status of children with severe febrile illnesses and also involved conducting a number of clinical trials comparing different fluid regimes for treatment of shock in different groups of severely ill children.

My current research interests are in investigation of effectiveness of treatments recommended for children admitted with severe illnesses. I am also interested in identifying risk factors for mortality and morbidity of common childhood conditions, guidance compliance, and outcomes spanning hospitals (clusters) in Kenya. This is aimed at informing case management of these conditions with high mortality and identify outstanding questions that may be addressed by pragmatic clinical trials. I will be leading safety evaluation in Kenya of a malaria vaccine that will be introduced as pilot into the routine childhood immunization schedule in three African countries. Main interests are in clinical epidemiology of severe childhood illnesses including designing and conduct of appropriate clinical trials, implementation research, and quality of in-hospital care.