DrNoah Fongwen

Dr Noah Fongwen currently a clinical research fellow and a Doctor of Public Health(Dr.PH) candidate at the Clinical Research Department(CRD) of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine(LSHTM). He also provides support to the Africa Centres for Disease Control(Africa CDC) through the LSHTM/Africa CDC collaboration. He is a global health expert skilled in advanced research methods, implementation science, economic evaluation of complex public health interventions and point of care technologies. He has expertise in areas such as diagnostics research, maternal and child health, HIV/TB control, NTDs and other chronic diseases, antimicrobial resistance control and outbreak response. He has worked in Cameroon as a clinician(M.D) and public health specialist for 5 years where he supported the government in implementing its public health strategies ranging from maternal and child health, vaccination, chronic diseases and outbreak response. He also works with WHO TDR and SIHI in promoting research within social innovation across Africa to ensure sustainability and political buy-in. He is keen on transforming evidence into policy and practice. His current doctor of public health research work is on transforming the Health Centre by Phone innovation in Malawi from a one-way means of providing health education to underserved populations to a two-way communications tool to provide alerts of infectious outbreaks and other health information such as vaccine coverage and to conduct research on how to replicate and scale up innovations in Africa.

In terms of diagnostics, he is the project coordinator in an ongoing Wellcome Trust project led by Professors Rosanna Peeling and David Heymann involving international partners across the world such as the Africa CDC, Latin America Allliance for IVDs, ASEAN, regulatory agencies for IVDs. This project will consist of consultations about a new regulatory policy framework that can streamline the access to diagnostics. Noah is also WHO consultant in the development of Target Product Profiles(TPPs) for diagnostics for NTDs such as Yaws and Mycetoma. He is also the WHO TDR Global coordinator.

Dr Noah Fongwen has more than 30 peer reviewed publications and several published systematic reviews. He is also a guest editor for a special 2019 issue of the African Journal of Laboratory Medicine, with theme: “The Future of Diagnostics”. He has co-authored books in diagnostics.