Editorial Board
Paul Saunderson
Editor-in-Chief
Paul received his medical degree from Cambridge University and has been involved in leprosy work since 1981, particularly in Uganda and then at ALERT in Ethiopia. He joined American Leprosy Missions in 2000, and has served on several World Health Organization (WHO) advisory and technical committees and is a member of the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations (ILEP).
ORCID
Saba Lambert
Deputy Editor
Saba trained as a rural GP before developing an interest in tropical diseases. She ran clinical trials on Ciclosporin for leprosy reactions at ALERT hospitals in Addis Ababa obtaining a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is based in Ethiopia where she works as a leprosy clinician, is involved in training and various research projects related to leprosy and other skin NTDs. She is part of the ILEP technical commission, convening a group looking at capacity building in leprosy.
ORCID
Shyamala Anand
Associate Editor
Dr Shyamala Anand is Senior Technical Advisor for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) with American Leprosy Missions. She is a medical doctor, an ophthalmologist by specialization, with more than 35 years of clinical and field experience in the NGO sector in India. She is currently involved in programmes and research targeted at reducing transmission of NTDs, improving care and quality of life for people with severe NTD disabilities, and in digital solutions for last mile delivery of services to improve outcomes and bring lasting change for people affected by NTDs and NTD-related disability.
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David Chandler
Associate Editor
David Chandler is a Consultant Dermatologist at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (Brighton). He completed postgraduate studies in tropical medicine and international health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and undertook research in India to assess the economic impact of leprosy reactions on patients and their families. His interest is in skin infections and NTDs and he has worked in Mexico, Brazil, India and East Africa. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Infection at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, where his research focuses on the neglected fungal disease mycetoma.
ORCID
Belen Dofitas
Associate Editor
Belen Lardizabal-Dofitas is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and completed her dermatology training at the Philippine General Hospital. She is a Fellow of the Philippine Dermatological Society and a founding member of its Leprosy Subspecialty Group. She is a wound specialist and Clinical Epidemiologist with special interests in skin neglected tropical diseases, health social science and teledermatology, and is President of the Philippine Leprosy Mission. At present, Dr Dofitas is an Active Consultant of the Department of Dermatology-St. Luke’s Medical Center-Quezon City, an Associate Professor 4 of the College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila, and Vice-Chair for Research, Section Head of Skin Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Division Head of Complex Wounds at the Department of Dermatology, Philippine General Hospital.
ORCID
Diana Lockwood
Associate Editor
Diana's work focuses on improving the outcome of leprosy patients with nerve damage. Her research programme has six main areas: understanding the pathogenesis of leprosy reactions, looking at the molecular effects of treatment on inflammation in reactional lesions, improving treatment for reactions, looking at risk factors for nerve damage, using strain typing of M. leprae to understand the epidemiology of leprosy, and studies on the interaction between HIV and M. leprae.
ORCID
Liesbeth Mieras
Associate Editor
Liesbeth Mieras is a medical doctor, serving as Head of the Medical Technical Department of NLR, with over 20 years’ experience working in global health. While working as a medical advisor in countries endemic for Neglected Tropical Diseases, including leprosy, she gained valuable experience applying science in medical practice. Liesbeth has developed and coordinated several multi-country leprosy research projects.
ORCID
VRR Pemmaraju
Associate Editor
Dr VRR Pemmaraju is currently Programme Advisor (Medical Issues) at the Sasakawa Health Foundation, Japan. Prior to that he was epidemiologist and acting Team Leader of the Global Leprosy Programme at the WHO. Dr Pemmaraju coordinated with national programmes, international agencies, and academic institutions in accelerating implementation of global leprosy strategies as an epidemiologist and acting team leader of the WHO Global Leprosy Programme. He developed digital data management applications for national leprosy programmes and tools for monitoring and evaluation of leprosy and leprosy elimination programmes.
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Ruth Peters
Associate Editor
Dr Ruth Peters is an assistant professor in global health at the Athena Institute, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her current research is focused on 1) understanding and addressing complex societal problems (in particular health-related stigma) by taking a transdisciplinary approach, and 2) methodology development and facilitating public engagement in global health.
In 2015, she defended her PhD thesis on leprosy-related stigma and was awarded the distinction cum laude. Currently, she is the principal investigator of two multi-country studies. Ruth has more than 30 publications and has presented her work at more than 10 conferences. In 2018 - 2019 she was a visiting research fellow at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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Peter Steinmann
Associate Editor
Dr Peter Steinmann is a trained epidemiologist and public health specialist working as a project leader at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. He also holds a habilitation (Associate professorship) at the University of Basel. He has a track record of research and consultancies related to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) with a focus on leprosy, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and schistosomiasis, and public health in general. His technical expertise includes NTD research and control program implementation, public health, data quality and surveillance, and epidemiological surveys.
ORCID
Sundeep Chaitanya Vedithi
Associate Editor
Dr Sundeep Chaitanya is working as the Director of Research and Innovation at the American Leprosy Missions (ALM) and as a Research Associate at the Department of Biochemistry – the University of Cambridge in the UK. With a doctoral degree in Molecular biology and Immunology of leprosy from India and nine years of laboratory-based research experience in genomics, transcriptomics, immune biomarkers and computational biology, Sundeep leads multicentric scientific research projects in drug discovery and development of diagnostics for leprosy. With a strong passion to translate laboratory research findings into practice in the field to reduce the global the burden of leprosy, Sundeep leads the initiative to set up the ALM Centre for Translational Research and Innovation at the University of Cambridge.
ORCID
Rie Yotsu
Associate Editor
Dr Rie Yotsu received her medical degree from the Jikei University in Japan and is currently an Associate Professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the USA. She is a dermatologist whose experience spans multiple countries working for leprosy and other skin-related neglected tropical diseases (skin NTDs). Her main research interests are improving access to healthcare for people affected by skin conditions with use of teledermatology and digital health tools, diagnosis and treatment for skin NTDs, and surveillance. She serves on a several WHO advisory and technical committees and is the chair of the Neglected Tropical Disease NGO Network Skin NTDs Cross-Cutting Group.
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Advisory Board
Abraham Assefa (Consultant for WHO-TDR, Ethiopia)
Kidist Bobosha (Lead for leprosy research, AHRI, Ethiopia)
Warwick Britton (Professor of Medicine and Immunology, Australia)
Paul Fine (Professor of Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK)
Christian Johnson (Medical Consultant, FRF, Benin)
Judith Justice (Professor of Medical Anthropology and Health Policy, UCSF, USA)
VM Katoch (Former Director General ICMR, India; Member of Lepra Board)
Zoica Pereira (Social Sciences Professor, Brazil)
P Narasimha Rao (President ILA, Professor of Dermatology, Hyderabad, India)
Jan Hendrik Richardus (Prof. Emeritus of Public Health, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
Doug Soutar (Retired, Former ILEP General Secretary, UK)
Aparna Srikantam (Head, Blue Peter Research Laboratory, India)
Sujai Suneetha (Institute for Specialised Services in Leprosy (INSSIL), Hyderabad, India)
Wim van Brakel (Medical Director, NLR, Netherlands)
Marcos Virmond (Former President ILA; Professor, FOB-UPS, Brazil)
Michael Waters (Retired Leprologist, UK)