Conference Chairs

ASLM2021 Conference Chair: Assoc Prof Haja Isatta Wurie

Associate Professor Haja Isatta Wurie is an experienced senior public health and clinical laboratory advisor with a demonstrated history of working in government agencies, non-profit organisations and the private management industry. She is Senior Lecturer, Head of Chemical Pathology Department, and Laboratory Science Coordinator at the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, University of Sierra Leone. Assoc Prof Wurie helped create Sierra Leone’s National Laboratory Policy and Strategic Plan. Before this, she was Director of Laboratory Services at RAMSY Medical Laboratories for 22 years. Assoc Prof Wurie has provided leadership and technical support for medical laboratory systems in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Sierra Leone. She currently provides support as a member of the West African Health Organisation five-person expert technical workstream and co-chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for Emergencies in Sierra Leone. She is skilled in nonprofit organisations, clinical research, epidemiology, programme evaluation and capacity building.

ASLM2021 Conference Chair: Dr Yenew Kebede Tebeje

Dr Yenew Kebede Tebeje is a medical microbiologist and public health expert with over 20 years of clinical, teaching, laboratory science, research, capacity building, and programme design and management experience. Dr Kebede currently serves as Head of Laboratory Systems at Africa CDC, where he leads programmes to strengthen public health laboratory systems and networks in all 55 Member States in Africa. His achievements include building laboratory systems in low-income countries, developing human resource capacity, and developing policy frameworks and guidelines that impact laboratory programmes in Africa. Before Africa CDC, Dr Kebede worked for more than 12 years as Technical Officer and later as Branch Chief for Laboratory at US CDC in Ethiopia. He also worked as an assistant professor and Head of Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia.

ASLM2021 Scientific Chair: Dr Pascale Ondoa

Dr Pascale Ondoa is a virologist currently serving as the Director of Science and New initiatives at the African Society of Laboratory Medicine (ASLM). Dr Ondoa obtained her medical degree from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon in 1992 and briefly worked as a medical doctor at the Centre Jamot, the tuberculosis reference hospital of Yaoundé. In 1996, she obtained a Master in Biomedical Science from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Later on, she obtained a Master in Molecular Biology from the Vrije Universiteit Brussels in 1999 and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Virology) from the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 2001.

From 2002-2009, she conducted her post-doctoral studies at the immunology unit of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, focusing on models of resistance to HIV infection, in humans and in non-human primates, incomplete immune restoration upon suppressive antiretroviral therapy and the development of alternative laboratory assays to monitor HIV treatment in resource-limited settings.

In 2009, Dr Ondoa joined the Amsterdam Institute for Global health and Development (AIGHD) as a senior scientist, under the leadership of the late Prof Joep Lange. She was involved in the research and implementation aspects of various projects looking at HIV drug resistance in sub-Saharan Africa, exploring ways to mitigate barriers to laboratory test uptake, and addressing gaps in the laboratory systems in the resource-limited settings of Africa. Since 2017, Dr Ondoa has provided scientific leadership to the ASLM team for the building of medical laboratory services, systems and network capacity throughout Africa. She remains affiliated to AIGHD as an assistant professor and continues to contribute to the supervision of students conducting research in global health.

ASLM2021 Scientific Chair: Dr Trevor Peter

Dr. Trevor Peter was appointed as Board Chairman for the African Society for Laboratory Medicine in 2012. He is a leading proponent of the ASLM2020 Vision of “Improved Healthcare in Africa through Strengthened Laboratory Services”. Dr Peter has spent over 20 years in research and global health and has a long history of working to improve healthcare in Africa and elsewhere. He worked initially in Zimbabwe from 1991-1999 on a regional research programme studying the epidemiology of infectious disease. In 2000, he joined the Harvard School of Public Health and became laboratory director of the Botswana-Harvard School of Public Health Partnership HIV Reference Laboratory. In 2005, Dr. Peter joined the Clinton Foundation as a Lead Scientific Advisor and now is the Senior Director, Diagnostics Services at the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Dr. Peter has spent 10 years advising public health programmes on laboratory strengthening and scale-up across 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. He has co-authored over 60 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. He holds a PhD from the University of Florida and a Master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.