Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania

 

Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences Logo

Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and has a long standing collaboration with the Harvard Chan School on a number of public health research and training efforts. This relationship, which began more than 35 years ago, has grown even stronger during the last 20 years through joint large research studies, and both programmatic and training activities. Building human capacity has been a long-term goal of the collaboration. Each year numerous Tanzanian physicians, scientists, and researchers attend degree programs or participate in non-degree training programs or academic sabbaticals at the Harvard Chan School. Several training programs have been, and currently are, supported by the Fogarty International Center. The collaboration has recently initiated training activities in Dar es Salaam aimed at strengthening the MPH and Doctoral programs at MUHAS. The site’s areas of health expertise include maternal and child health, nutrition, and infectious diseases, particularly HIV, TB and malaria, mental health, and NCDs.


Site Director

Dr. FrumenceDr. Gasto Frumence, Associate Professor, Department of Development Studies, MUHAS
gasto.frumence65@gmail.com

Dr. Frumence is the current Dean of the School of Public Health and Social Sciences and has worked in collaboration with the School of Public Health Makerere University in the development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation proposal on Leadership and Management Capacity Building Program. The project aims at building the capacity of managers in high burden Malaria countries including Tanzania and Uganda to achieve Malaria eradication. The proposal is now in the final stage of approval and its implementation is expected to start in the near future. Apart from conducting research and community service (consultancy activities) as an Associate Professor, he teaches Health System Management and Leadership and Qualitative Research Methods to postgraduate and undergraduate students, supervise and mentor students in Master dissertations and PhD thesis and he has been an external examiner for Master and PhD candidates in various Universities including University of Dar es Salaam and Mzumbe University in Tanzania.


Site Mentors

Prof. AboudProfessor Said Aboud, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and Director of Research and Publications
drp@muhas.ac.tz

Prof. Said Aboud is a Medical Doctor and a Clinical Microbiologist/Immunologist with over 20 years of experience in HIV research including HIV diagnosis and disease monitoring including HIV drug resistance testing, HIV and nutrition, HIV pathogenesis and genotyping, and HIV vaccinology. He has served as the Laboratory Coordinator since 2004 for the Harvard PEPFAR HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Program in Tanzania and in that capacity has been involved in the planning and monitoring of laboratory testing related to HIV diagnosis and care, has conducted lab trainings, and provided supportive supervision for all laboratory activities. For the last 10 years, he has worked as the Laboratory Manager and Laboratory Director of the Harvard Muhimbili Partnership Research Laboratory at MUHAS and has been instrumental in developing QA/QC standardized operating procedures for laboratory assays and protocols for several large-scale international clinical trials. Dr. Aboud has mentored and supervised several dissertations and theses. Dr. Aboud’s experience in HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and antimicrobial resistance research makes him well prepared to serve on grant application.   

Dr. BalandyaDr. Emmanuel Balandya, Associate Professor of Psychology
ebalandya@yahoo.com

Dr. Balandya is a physician-scientist with expertise in biomedical sciences encompassing Physiology, Hematology, Immunology and Vaccinology. He obtained his Medical Degree at University of Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania. Doctorate Degree at Dartmouth College USA and Post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School USA. Following his return to Tanzania in 2014, he has researched on immunity and infections in Sickle Cell Disease (through the NIH-Fogarty/NHLBI/UCSF GloCal Fellowship) and is currently PI for the Sickle Pan African Research Consortium (SPARCO)-Tanzania a U01 grant funded by NHLBI with the goal to advance research as a strategy for improving health, advocacy and training for sickle cell disease in Tanzania as part of the larger Sub-Saharan Africa Network. He is also Co-Investigator in several ongoing health research and education capacity building projects. He is published and has presented his work at national and international platforms. Dr. Balandya is Member of the Organizing Committees for the MUHAS Scientific Conference and National NCD Conference. Dr. Balandya is Director of Postgraduate Studies at MUHAS Board Member of Young Scientists Tanzania (YST) a nation-wide Science Outreach Programme and consults with the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) and Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) on matters related to health research and education.

Sylvia Kaaya

Dr. Sylvia Kaaya, Dean, School of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry and Mental Health
skaaya@gmail.com

Dr. Sylvia Kaaya, serves as the dean, School of Medicine, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania-East Africa). She holds a doctor of medicine, master of science in medicine and a diploma in psychiatry. Supported by Carnegie Foundation grants, she has completed two fellowship programs in health and behavior through Harvard Medical School. Areas of expertise include epidemiology, adolescent sexuality, biostatistics and health services research.

Dr. KillewoDr. Japhet Killewo, Professor of Epidemiology
jkillewo@yahoo.co.uk

Dr. Japhet Killewo (JK) has been working for Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) for the past 39 years in various positions from assistant lecturer to the current position as professor. The university mandate is to do research, teach and provide services to communities. JK has been teaching epidemiology and research methodology to undergraduates and postgraduates in various health sciences in the university, coordinated teaching programmes and implemented research in communicable as well as non-communicable diseases. JK has also conducted research in reproductive health and health systems. JK’s areas of interest are outbreak investigations for communicable diseases using one health approaches, reproductive health and disease surveillance systems for non-communicable diseases in an urban area in Tanzania where JK established a cohort for follow-up and interventions of non-communicable diseases.

Dr. KwesigaboDr. Gideon Kwesigabo, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, MUHAS
gpkwesigabo@gmail.com

Dr. Kwesigabo is an Epidemiologist and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr Kwesigabo served as Head of Department Epidemiology and Biostatistics and later as Dean, School of Public Health and Social Sciences, currently he is the Director of Continuing Education and Professional Development-MUHAS. He has devoted much of his research activities to HIV and AIDS related issues, however more recently Dr. Kwesigabo has also been involved in gender matters, specifically, women’s health and violence against children, and issues of human resources health, disease surveillance, monitoring and evaluation and maternal and child health

Dr. MugusiProfessor Ferdinand Mugusi, Professor of Internal Medicine
fm.mugusi@gmail.com

Prof. Mugusi was a Professor and former Chair of Medicine at MUHAS and has been involved in a number of HIV-related research training grants and studies, which have been mostly supported by the NIH. He was Principal Investigator of the ICOHRTA training grant, which ended last year. Currently he is a Co-Investigator and Site PI on the HIV implementation science (HIS) D43 Fogarty training grant that trains Tanzanian Researchers on HIV/AIDS Implementation Science. He has been involved in a number of research clinical trials of HIV and TB since 1994. Studies he has led and collaborated on include the effect of HIV on TB disease, the effect of nutritional supplements on TB, HIV and malaria, the effect of nutritional supplements in HIV patients on ART and Phase I and II HIV vaccine trials. Through these activities, he has mentored over 100 medical students, over 70 MMed students and 16 pre-and post doctoral fellows. He has an extensive research background in HIV and has been highly involvement in international collaborative trials and research training grants.