Researchers receive funding from Gates Foundation to help understand infectious disease whereabouts in Africa.
Birmingham biostatisticians receive funding from Gates Foundation to help understand infectious disease whereabouts in Africa, enabling resources to be deployed more strategically.
Newly appointed 125th Anniversary Chair, Professor Emanuele Giorgi and Dr Claudio Fronterre, Senior Research Associate, have jointly been awarded £1.8 million of funding enabling research that will use sophisticated yet cost-effective geospatial analysis of neglected tropical diseases to create decision-making tools that enhance accuracy and optimise the use of resources to combat disease in lower and middle-income countries.
The research will map neglected tropical disease such as schistosomiasis, which is spread by parasitic worms that live in freshwater snails in many African countries. For schistosomiasis morbidity control, the World Health Organisation recommends mass treatment that is targeted at high-risk groups. By improving the accuracy of identified these high-risk groups, resources can be better targeted to those most at need.
Our vision is to be the leading international hub for the development and application of geostatistical methods in the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases, empowering communities with data-driven solutions for global health improvement.
Targeting treatments to control neglected tropical diseases can also mean fewer people are subjected to unnecessary treatment, not only saving resources, but also reducing stigmatisation and respective culturally important boundaries in the case of diseases such as genital schistosomiasis.
The researchers will work on strengthening capacity and equipping regional partner institutions with the training and practical resources needed to sustain and extend these approaches in Africa, meaning the models could be run independently in the future.
“Our vision is to be the leading international hub for the development and application of geostatistical methods in the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases, empowering communities with data-driven solutions for global health improvement. Through this research programme we will create open-source tools and reproducible workflows, developed to be maintained, adapted, and applied without long-term external dependence. This is so important for the countries that we work with” explains Professor Emanuele Giorgi, Professor of Statistical Science, School of Health Sciences, University of Birmingham.
University of Birmingham will strengthen surveillance, mapping, and capacity-building in low-resource settings, working with the University of Oxford who will lead on the mathematically modelling part of the project.
Professor Giorgi joined the University of Birmingham in October through of the 125th Anniversary Fellows and Chairs scheme. His post, as the Dr Nigel Evans 125th Anniversary Chair in AI & Data Science, has been generously supported through a philanthropic donation that will help Professor Giorgi to establish a Statistics for Population Health research group in Birmingham.
Professor of Statistical Science
Staff profile for Professor Emanuele Giorgi, Professor of Statistical Science within the Department of Applied Health Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham.
