Agenda

Diagnostics Day 2023
The post-COVID political agenda I: pandemic preparedness & diagnostics Dr Daniel Bausch FIND Senior Advisor, Global Health Security Bio Dr Heulwen Philpot Head of the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat Bio
The post-COVID political agenda II: access to testing and universal health coverage Dr Sanjay Sarin FIND VP, Access Bio Dr Marcos Espinal Acting Assistant Director, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Bio
The primary care key Dr Nyane Letsie Director General Health Services, Ministry of Health Lesotho Dr Howard Zucker Deputy Director for Global Health, US CDC Bio Moderated by: Kekeletso Kao FIND Senior Manager, Access Bio
Showcase: a new generation of diagnostic tools Dr Marta Fernández Suárez FIND Chief Technology Officer Bio Diagnostic showcase: technologies featured
Diagnostic testing as an enabler of gender equity in health Dr Angela Muriuki FIND Director, Women’s Health Bio Professor Dr Woo Yin Ling Co-founder of the ROSE Foundation Bio
Diagnostics global advocacy strategy and toolkit launch Dr Alexandre Costa Senior Health Advisor, UNICEF Bio
The business case for investment in diagnostics Alexandra Bertholet FIND Deputy Director, Market Innovations Bio Dr Ngozi Erondu Technical Director, GLIDE Bio Discussion paper: innovative finance for neglected tropical diseases
A WHA Resolution on diagnostics Dr Bill Rodriguez FIND CEO Bio Dr Kenneth Fleming Chair, The Lancet Commission on diagnostics Bio Bawelile Philomena Sibili Simelane Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini and lead negotiator of the WHA Resolution on diagnostics Bio Dr Ayoade Alakija WHO Special Envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, Chair of the African Vaccine Delivery Alliance (AVDA) and Chair of FIND Bio
Please note this event was recorded, and footage may be used subsequently by FIND in line with our privacy policy. For more information, please contact us.

About our speakers
Back to the agenda	Dr Ayoade Alakija WHO Special Envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, Chair of the African Vaccine Delivery Alliance (AVDA) and Chair of FIND Dr Alakija is a visionary leader, strategic thinker and vocal advocate for equity and justice with a global presence and ability to inspire and catalyse action at scale. As a medical doctor with over two decades experience working across Asia, the Americas, the Pacific region, Europe and Africa, she is expert in global health, development and humanitarian relief. She brings unique insights from working at every level of the health and development architecture- local, national, regional and global. Driven by a deep commitment to achieve social justice and equity through humane approaches for transformational change at individual, community and systems level, she has been a leading voice calling for the urgent reimagining of how the globe should respond more consciously to the inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In her previous Minister-Counsellor role as Chief Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, she led the integrated humanitarian response and spearheaded the Oslo Humanitarian Conference for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, working with governments and multilateral institutions to mobilize resources for some of the most under-recognized humanitarian crises in the world. Dr Alakija is also the founder of the Emergency Coordination Centre in Nigeria which promotes the rights of women and girls in education and health. Twitter: @yodifiji Substack: ayoadealakija.substack.com
Back to the agenda	Dr Daniel Bausch FIND Senior Advisor, Global Health Security Dr Daniel Bausch, MD, MPH&TM, FASTMH, is the Senior Advisor for Global Health Security, overseeing FIND`s efforts on pandemic preparedness and response, surveillance, humanitarian emergencies, and antimicrobial resistance. He is trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, tropical medicine, and public health. Dr Bausch specializes in the research and control of emerging tropical viruses, with over 25 years’ experience in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia combating viruses such as Ebola, Lassa, hantavirus, and SARS coronaviruses. Previously, he served as Director of the United Kingdom`s Public Health Rapid Support team (2017-21), a joint effort by Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to respond and conduct research to prevent and control outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases around the world. He has also held posts at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland; U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 in Lima, Peru; Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, USA; and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, USA. In addition to his role at FIND, Dr Bausch holds an appointment as a Professor of Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is the current President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He places a strong emphasis on capacity development in all his projects and has a keen interest in the role of the scientist in promoting health and human rights. Dr Bausch is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
Back to the agenda	Alexandra Bertholet FIND Deputy Director, Market Innovations Alexandra Bertholet joined FIND as Deputy Director of the Market Innovations Unit in June 2022. In this role, she is responsible for leading a team that delivers insightful and actionable market intelligence, enables partners’ successful product launches and commercial strategies, establishes health (trade) financing programmes and launches a market incubator that fosters new partnerships and pilots alternative distribution channels. Previously, as a consultant to FIND, she worked on market readiness for sequencing products and trade finance. Alexandra has almost 20 years of market shaping, access and industry experience. Prior to FIND, she was the Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives for Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative (DNDi). She has worked for Unitaid, WHO, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Coalition PLUS Paris and Ernst & Young’s Business Advisory Services in New York. She has worked across Africa, Europe, SE Asia, South America and the Caribbean, and enjoys bringing people together, acting as the “translator” between industry and unmet public health needs. Alexandra has a BS in Finance and Accounting from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a Certificate in Leadership and Negotiation from Harvard Business School.
Back to the agenda	Dr Alexandre Costa Senior Health Advisor, UNICEF Dr. Alex Costa is a Senior Health Advisor in the global Health Programme Group at UNICEF headquarters in New York where he coordinates UNICEF’s multisectoral response to Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and manages projects aimed at increasing access to in vitro diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries. He has broad experience in the life sciences and expertise in developing comprehensive public health laboratory systems in Africa and Southeast Asia for detection of AMR as well as diagnosis, preparedness, surveillance, and response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Prior to joining UNICEF in 2017, he served as a technical officer at the World Health Organization in the Asia-Pacific region, where he was the focal point for laboratory diagnostics and AMR in Cambodia and Vietnam. He previously served as the director of the laboratory programme for the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in Liberia where he supported the establishment of a national laboratory diagnostics program. He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and carried out post-doctoral studies on infectious diseases at Stanford University.
Back to the agenda	Dr Ngozi Erondu Technical Director, GLIDE Ngozi Erondu PhD MPH brings her nearly 15 years of experience and leadership in global public health experience to GLIDE. Ngozi has spent her career researching and supporting global health governance and health systems strengthening in more than 40 countries, primarily in the sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa regions. Through her work at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law she has conducted operational research and contributed to policy advocacy for malaria and HIV disease programmes. Ngozi also brings her experience working with US Centres for Disease Control, the UK Health Security Agency, and the World Health Organisation. Dr Erondu is a senior scholar and co-chair for an upcoming Lancet Commission exploring the health impacts of discrimination in global public health with the O’Neill Institute and is a Fellow with several policy and governance entities including Chatham House, John Hopkins University, and the Aspen Institute New Voices Fellowship. Ngozi is also the Health Security co-editor for the PLOS Global Health academic journal.
Back to the agenda	Dr Marcos Espinal Acting Assistant Director, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Dr. Marcos Antonio Espinal, a national of the Dominican Republic, received his medical degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He undertook postgraduate training in pediatrics for three years at the Robert Reid Children Hospital of Santo Domingo. Thereafter, he obtained a master's degree in public health and a doctorate in public health from the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health. Dr. Espinal began his professional career in 1992, at the Ministry of Health of the Dominican Republic and the National Center for Research on Maternal and Child Health, serving as Coordinator of research projects on maternal and child health and infectious diseases, and as Epidemiologist for the Robert Reid Children Hospital, coordinating collection and analysis of morbidity and mortality data of the hospital. From 1996 to 1997, he served as Research Scientist for the New York City Public Health Department, where he coordinated a HIV/AIDS pediatric surveillance project in ten hospitals in New York. He joined WHO as Medical Officer in November 1997. There, he was project manager for DOTS-Plus for Multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), an initiative launched by WHO and international partners to assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of second-line drugs. In 2003, he was appointed as Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, a global movement aiming at the elimination of TB as a public health challenge, where he served until 2010. Dr. Espinal joined PAHO Headquarters in August 2010 as Area Manager, Health Surveillance, Diseases Prevention and Control (former HSD). In 2013 his title changed to Director, Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis (CHA), and since January 2018 he served as Department Director, Communicable Diseases and Environmental Determinants of Health (CDE) until his designation as Acting Assistant Director of PASB on 1 June 2022.
Back to the agenda	Dr Marta Fernández Suárez FIND Chief Technology Officer Marta Fernández Suárez serves as Chief Technology Officer. She joined FIND in 2017 as a product development consultant, with increasing responsibilities to lead FIND innovation and R&D activities. In her current role, Marta is responsible for the overall strategic direction and management of the technical programs within FIND, with a focus on leveraging innovation to accelerate availability of fit-for-purpose diagnostic products in low- and middle-income countries. Previously, Marta served as the VP of Assay R&D at Daktari Diagnostics. She has more than 10 years of experience in in vitro diagnostics (IVD) product development, both in academia and in industry, and has led teams through the entire product development process, from proof-of-concept through clinical validation. Her work has been published in high-impact journals and she serves on expert panels and review boards for federal agencies and foundations. Marta is passionate about improving health around the world and has more than 15 years of experience in the design and on-the-ground implementation of international development projects in Africa and Central and South America. She obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at the Institut Quimic de Sarria (Barcelona, Spain), and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, USA).
Back to the agenda	Dr Kenneth Fleming Chair, The Lancet Commission on diagnostics Dr Fleming has been an academic pathologist for over 40 years. His research interests include the pathogenesis of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, and the molecular analysis of tissue. He has over 200 publications and a H-index of 55. Dr Fleming has had several major leadership positions in academic medicine, including appointment as the inaugural Head of the Oxford Medical Sciences Division (Dean of Medicine) from 2000 till 2008. He was also Deputy Head of the UK Council of Medical Schools from 2002-5. Since 2008, the problems of lack of pathology in many countries have been his focus. He has set up a MMed for Pathology in Zambia, set up and directed the International Department at the Royal College of Pathologists and been Senior Adviser for Pathology to the Centre for Global Heath at the NCI. He chaired the Lancet Commission on diagnostics and has served as a WHO adviser for several areas of pathology.
Back to the agenda	Kekeletso Kao FIND Senior Manager, Access Kekeletso (Keke) joined FIND Geneva in 2011 following her stint as consultant for Lesotho and Swaziland projects for FIND starting in 2008. In 2003 she earned a master’s degree in microbiology from Rhodes University, South Africa. After graduation, she worked as a laboratory scientist in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Lesotho. In 2004 she joined Population Services International, Lesotho, as an Outreach Coordinator where she was responsible for the organization and coordination of HIV/AIDS outreach activities to mainly rural communities of Lesotho. In 2005, Keke was appointed Director of Laboratory Services in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Lesotho. In this role she led the process for the development of the first national laboratory policy and strategic plan. Together with the National TB Programme Manager she mobilized resources and technical support that allowed the country to conduct its first national Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Survey.
Back to the agenda	Dr Nyane Letsie Director General Health Services, Ministry of Health Lesotho
Back to the agenda	Sarah-Jane Loveday FIND Director, Communications Sarah-Jane Loveday leads the communications team at FIND, with two decades of experience in health communications spanning public relations, external scientific affairs, global strategic marketing and medical communications. Prior to joining FIND in 2017, she co-led the healthcare team at Weber Shandwick Geneva, a leading global public relations agency with both private and non-profit sector mandates, and has worked in-house and as a consultant for various private sector pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Celgene, Novartis, GSK, Ipsen and Abbott. Sarah-Jane began her career in journal publishing, and trained as a medical editor. Her extensive portfolio covers all aspects of communications strategy, planning and delivery, both online and offline. Sarah-Jane is a Certified Medical Publications Professional, holds a BSc(Hons) from City University, London (UK) and a master’s degree from Royal Holloway, University of London (UK).
Back to the agenda	Dr Angela Muriuki FIND Director, Women’s Health Angela joined FIND in February 2023 as the Director, Women’s Health, based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has 16+ years’ experience working with women and girls in programme, policy, research, system strengthening and clinical roles in East, West and Central Africa and in South Asia. She is a passionate advocate for person- and people-centred approaches to addressing the needs of women and girls based on their age and life stage. Some of her previous work includes translation of key principles from the science of the developing adolescent’s brain into design and delivery of programmes for very young adolescents in Tanzania, testing of a risk-based approach to provision of targeted postnatal care in Bangladesh, testing of resupply approaches for conflicted-affected chronic care patients (HIV, NCD) during displacement and forced movement in DRC, adapting health systems to meet the needs of nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists in Kenya and a person-centred, holistic approach to care of pregnant and parenting adolescents in Sierra Leone. Angela obtained her medical degree at the University of Nairobi and her master’s degree from The Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam and Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, as part of the Erasmus Mundus Masters Programme.
Back to the agenda	Dr Heulwen Philpot Head of the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat Heulwen Philpot is currently the Head of the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat, a time limited independent body established to support the implementation of the 100 Day mission. The 100day mission is seeking to make safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics ready to scale up within a 100 days of a future pandemic. Heulwen is a global health policy specialist by background, having worked at the UK department of health on the 2014 Ebola response and leading the UK’s international AMR strategy including the negotiation of the 2016 UN HLM Political declaration. More recently Heulwen was the Head of Multilateral Summits at the UK Cabinet Office overseeing G7 and G20 negotiations and the delivery of the 2021 UK G7 Presidency. In a voluntary capacity Heulwen is the head of International Advocacy at Resource Uganda, supporting grassroots community improvement programmes in Uganda. Heulwen grew up on the wild west coast of Wales and has a 1st class honours degree from the University of Cambridge.
Back to the agenda	Dr Bill Rodriguez FIND CEO Dr Bill Rodriguez joined FIND as Chief Executive Officer on 1 July 2021, following an earlier tenure as Chief Medical Officer between 2015 and 2017. He was previously Managing Director at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm supporting early-stage, high-impact social enterprises. A physician and entrepreneur, he has extensive experience across both private and public sectors, founding his own diagnostics company, Daktari Diagnostics. As a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, he established a research programme on diagnostics and operational research in global health. He left Harvard in 2003 to become the Chief Medical Officer of the William J. Clinton Foundation, where he helped broker pricing agreements of HIV drugs and diagnostic tests between African and Asian governments and the major suppliers. Bill is a highly respected figure in the global health community, serving as advisor to the World Health Organization, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, national governments on global HIV, tuberculosis, Ebola and COVID-19, as well as numerous established and start-up for-profit and not-for-profit social enterprises focused on global health. Bill is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale University School of Medicine, and trained in infectious disease medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he served as chief medical resident.
Back to the agenda	Dr Sanjay Sarin FIND VP, Access Sanjay Sarin joined FIND in September 2015 as Head of Country Operations for India and Head of Access Programme for Asia Pacific. He has a doctorate from PGIMER, Chandigarh, India and close to 20 years’ experience in health policy, market development, and business management with specialization in the development of strategic initiatives for driving access in emerging markets. In his current role, he is responsible for providing leadership for strategic plan development and implementation of current and planned operations in FIND India, ensuring continued engagement with partners and donors at local and international levels and leading the resource mobilization efforts in the AP region. Sanjay joined FIND from Becton Dickinson (BD), where he was Regional Director of Global Health for the Asia Pacific region and was responsible for design, development, and implementation of BD’s public health strategies. During his stint with BD, he was instrumental in establishing several key partnerships, including one with MoH India, which resulted in expansion of TB diagnostic capacity within the national TB programme; TB lab strengthening partnership with USAID in Indonesia; collaboration with Project Hope to strengthen diabetes management capacity at Class 1 facilities in China, and a lab systems strengthening partnership with CDC and MoH India known as the “Labs for Life Partnership”. Before joining BD, Sanjay served as Regional Lab Advisor (India & South East Asia) with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). In CHAI, he played a key role in scaling up access to CD4 monitoring within India’s AIDS Control Programme and was responsible for setting up more than a dozen functional CD4 laboratories, development of the CD4 enumeration guidelines and an external quality assurance system for CD4 monitoring in India.
Back to the agenda	Bawelile Philomena Sibili Simelane Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini and lead negotiator of the WHA Resolution on diagnostics
Back to the agenda	Professor Dr Woo Yin Ling Co-founder of the ROSE Foundation Dr. Woo Yin Ling is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University of Malaya and a consultant gynaecological oncologist in University Malaya Medical Centre. Her postdoctoral research was on HPV immunobiology where she was conferred her PhD by Cambridge University . Yin Ling returned to Malaysia in 2010 and have since been actively involved in of several research programs focusing on screening, prevention and management of gynaecological cancers in the Malaysian setting. Prof. Woo believes that any innovation in healthcare services must take into account the local resources with input from the stakeholders, particularly the women themselves. She is currently the country representative for the Asia-Oceania Research Organisation in Genital Infection and Neoplasia (AOGIN), member of the Asia Pacific Economic Consortium (APEC) Cervical Cancer working group, member of the WHO screening and treatment working group (WHO), Committee member for policy at the International Papillomavirus Society (IPVS) and is the founding trustee to ROSE Foundation. Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yin-ling-woo-84a135157/ https://twitter.com/YinLWoo
Back to the agenda	Dr Howard Zucker Deputy Director for Global Health, US CDC Howard Zucker, MD, JD, is the Deputy Director for Global Health, a position he assumed in January 2023. In this role, he has broad operating authority and responsibility for overall planning, direction, and management of global strategy and programs across CDC. Prior to this position, Dr. Zucker was a Visiting Research Professor at the School of Global Health, New York University. From 2014-2021, he served as Commissioner of Health for New York State where he oversaw the state response to many public health crises including Ebola, legionella, Zika, Covid-19, a measles outbreak, End the AIDS epidemic initiative, e-cigarette contamination, the opioid crisis, and water safety and quality issues. Dr. Zucker’s career also included serving as Assistant Director General at the World Health Organization (WHO). Serving as the highest-ranking American at WHO, he oversaw policy on a spectrum of global health issues with an overall budget of $200 million. In this role, he also chaired the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce, a coordinated network across and between countries with the objective of halting the production, trading, and selling of counterfeit medicines around the globe, and he oversaw the world’s essential medicines list – the global model formulary comprised of all medications vital to health and used by more than 150 nations worldwide. Dr. Zucker also served as a White House Fellow and as Health and Human Services’ Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health, where he worked on the federal SARS response plan and on the response to the anthrax crisis. He created and ran the nation’s Medical Reserve Corps and spearheaded programs in several other areas, including development of a children’s hospital in Iraq, maternal and child health in Afghanistan, and disease prevention with the Hungarian Minister of Health. Dr. Zucker has traveled on medical missions to China, as well as Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Dr. Zucker graduated from McGill University and holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from George Washington University School of Medicine, a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham University Law School, and a Master of Laws from Columbia Law School. He completed his training in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital, anesthesiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, pediatric critical care/pediatric anesthesiology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and pediatric cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is board certified in six specialties and completed a post-graduate diploma in Global Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Zucker was Director of the pediatric intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital and has had academic appointments at Yale, Columbia, and Einstein medical schools. He was an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and is a member of the Supreme Court Bar.