Our Team

Anchal Thapa

Anchal Thapa is working with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a Consultant-Health Economist for the IMPACT TB project. She is based at Birat Nepal Medical Trust, Kathmandu, Nepal and working on designing and conducting various types of health economics research in Tuberculosis. Currently she is involved in overseeing the patient cost survey and designing economic evaluation of various project interventions. Her educational qualification includes a Master’s degree in Health Economics and Health Policy from University of Birmingham, UK and Bachelors in Public Health from Nobel College, Kathmandu. Her aim is to establish health economics as an important area of research in Nepal and diversify her skills in different areas of public health.

Andrew Carey

Andrew Carey is the Project Manager for IMPACT TB at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He obtained a Masters in international politics from the University of Glasgow and has been managing EU-funded international development projects in the fields of health and education for the past 5 years.

Andy Ramsay

Dr Andy Ramsay is a public health consultant and an Honorary Professor in the Division of Infection and Global Health, St Andrews University Medical School, Scotland.   He supports the lab capacity strengthening work of the IMPACT TB project in Nepal

He obtained an MSc in Clinical Parasitology from the University of London and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD research focused on ways to improve  access to TB treatment through better diagnostic pathways.  He worked for 12 years in WHO where he led TB diagnostics research and served as Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership’s New Diagnostics Working Group. He now undertakes a variety of consultancy work for WHO and others supporting disease outbreak responses and infectious disease control programmes.

Bertie Squire

Bertie Squire is leading the health economics assessment of IMPACT TB. Bertie studied medicine and immunology at University College London and Cambridge University before professional training in internal medicine, infectious diseases and respiratory medicine at the Royal London Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital. From 1992 to 1995 he was Head of the Department of Medicine, Kamuzu Central Hospital, Lilongwe, Malawi. Since his appointment at LSTM in 1995, Bertie has maintained his research collaboration with the National TB Control Programme in Malawi and has facilitated the transformation of the collaboration into the Malawi-registered Trust for Research on Equity And Community Health (REACH). With his colleagues in Liverpool, Malawi and China he has built up a programme of multi-disciplinary applied health research aimed at providing knowledge for action in making health services for tuberculosis more accessible to poor people in developing countries (including those affected by the HIV pandemic). He holds an appointment in the UK National Health Service as Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and is the immediate past President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis & Lung Disease.

Bhola Rai

Bhola Rai is a Project Manager at BNMT Nepal based in the Makwanpur district. He is leading the ASCOT project, inbuilt within the IMPACT TB programme, which aims to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a socioeconomic support intervention for TB-affected households in Nepal. He has been working at BNMT for four years as a Research Associate for the IMPACT TB project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme as well as the Seed Award project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Bhola holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Health and is also pursuing Master’s degree in Public Health Administration from Tribhuwan University. Bhola has over seven years’ experience in research, particularly in data collection, management and analysis. He has over 10 publications in high impact peer-reviewed journals. Mr Rai has also worked as a team leader with the Nepal Nutrition Intervention Project in Sarlahi district in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Nepal’s Netra Jyoti Sangh.

Bibha Dhungel

Bibha Dhungel is Public Engagement Officer at Birat Nepal Medical Trust, based in Kathmandu. She is a creative and enthusiastic individual who believes in hard work and sincerity. With the experience of over five years in this field, Bibha currently leads the development, management and maintenance of all of the organization’s websites and the social media accounts (Twitter and Facebook) and the branding materials of the organization, including the Annual report. In the IMPACT TB project, she is responsible for managing the social media (www.twitter.com/impact_tb) as well as developing branding resources of the project.

Bibha is an active member of the fund raising team at BNMT. She has supported in writing successful grants such as TB REACH Wave 5, AmplifyChange, Global Fund/Save the Children National TB program. She also engages in developing various reports and their documentation, in other programmatic activities. She is MBA from Ace Institute of Management, Kathmandu and has previous experience of managing administration in BTC Pvt. Ltd. She enjoys singing, dancing and art.

Buddha Basnyat

Buddha Basnyat is a medical doctor practicing medicine in Kathmandu, Nepal and his research interests are infectious disease and high altitude medicine. He has published widely in both these fields in well-known medical journals and written chapters with co- authors in the latest standard medical textbooks. Buddha also has over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is the Director for the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit\Nepal and the Medical Director for the Nepal International Clinic and The Himalayan Rescue Association.

In all these institutions one of Buddha’s primary interests is to encourage young people to do research. He also works at Patan Hospital as a consultant in the internal medicine department and is a Professor of Medicine and Physiology at the Patan Academy of Health Sciences. Buddha is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh). He is also the Principal Investigator, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and recently he has been appointed as the Honorary Consul for Canada in Nepal.

Diepreye Ayabina

Diepreye Ayabina is a research assistant at LSTM working with Gabriela Gomes on modelling heterogeneity in TB transmission. She obtained her bachelors and masters in Mathematics and Computer Science from Federal University of Technology Owerri and University of Leeds respectively. She was recently awarded her PhD in Mathematics at Imperial College London where she worked on modelling diversity and competition in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Ewan Tomeny

Ewan Tomeny is a health economist and operational modeller, working since 2016 within the Centre for Applied Health Research and Delivery (CAHRD) at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. 

Ewan’s current work is concerned with the utilisation of virtual implementation modelling techniques to explore the cost-effectiveness of alternative strategies in the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis.  Working in multidisciplinary teams both in the UK and abroad, through developing a clear understanding of the patient-pathways and associated processes, his subsequent analyses aim to inform local and national health policy decisions.

Gabriela Gomes

Gabriela Gomes is leading the transmission modelling component of IMPACT TB. Gabriela Gomes graduated in Applied Mathematics from the University of Porto in 1987, and completed her MSc and PhD in Mathematics from the University of Warwick in 1990 and 1993, respectively.

In 1999, she was awarded a Wellcome Research Training Fellowship in Mathematical Biology. In 2002, she established her independent group at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, in Portugal, initially supported by a Marie Curie Excellence Grant, with a spectrum of projects ranging from fundamental mathematical concepts to management of population and ecosystem health, public engagement in science and development of research infrastructures. Since 2015, she has a joint appointment between the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

Gokul Mishra

Gokul is the NTP Liaison Officer for Nepal within the IMPACT TB project. He has worked with LHL International Tuberculosis Foundation, Norway as a Focal Person in Nepal since July 2010 and has been involved in the formulation, execution, monitoring and evaluation of the National Strategy Plan for the Nepal National TB Control Programme.

He worked with Britain Nepal Medical Trust (BNMT) as a Programme Manager for 17 years. During his tenure with BNMT, his role included the drafting of project proposals, programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and research activities. Gokul also has previous experience at the Nepal National Tuberculosis Centre (NTC) as the Advocacy, Communication and Social Mobilization Officer

Gokul has a Masters in Sociology from Tribhuvan University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Care Management from Pokhara University, Nepal in addition to a Masters in International Development Studies from Oslo University, Norway. He is now studying for a PhD from Texila American University, Guyana, Nicaragua. His PhD topic is the contribution of patient pathway Modeling to finding missing Tuberculosis cases in Nepal.

Govinda Majhi

Govinda Majhi is the District Program Coordinator for Chitwan District. He has been working with IMPACT TB since October 2018 but has been part of the Birat Nepal Medical Trust team for the past 2 years. His job role includes the planning and implementation of programme activities for IMPACT TB within the district.

Govinda holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Purbanchal University (Nepal) and a Master’s Degree from Rajiv Gandhi University (India), both in Public Health. His Masters focused on ‘Factors causing delay in pulmonary-TB diagnosis in Morang District Nepal’. Continuing his interest in TB, Govinda applied for an internship in BNMT’s tuberculosis programme in Sunsari District – sponsored by Global Fund. He was then offered a job as District Programme Coordinator for the area of Dang and District Programme Assistant for Udayapur. His passion towards fighting the chronic ongoing problem of TB in Nepal inspired him to eventually apply for his current role in Chitwan district. His vision is to see a TB-free Nepal.

Jens Levy

Jens is a Senior Epidemiologist with KNCV. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began his work with TB between 2004 and 2008 in Zambia where he helped set up one of the first and largest HIV anti-retroviral treatment cohorts in Africa. His work there included integrating TB diagnosis and treatment algorithms with HIV care in a low resource setting. In the course of this work he helped to develop the supporting electronic medical record system that would become SmartCare. Since then he has worked extensively with data and databases for infectious disease research and surveillance in Africa and South East Asia with the US CDC and AFRIMS. This has included Influenza surveillance in Nepal. He joined KNCV in June of 2016 where he has conducted Epidemiological Reviews for National TB programs, operations research, and supporting TB prevalence surveys. He has recently worked in Vietnam to develop a mathematical model of TB that was used to support the recent Global Fund application.

Job van Rest

Job van Rest is the lead data manager for IMPACT TB. Job van Rest started working with KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation in 2008 and has been working as head of the TB data management unit for several years. He has been part of the improvement of the routine TB surveillance system in The Netherlands since then.

Job’s main focus is on supporting countries with the implementation of digital health projects such as the development and renewal of their electronic TB surveillance systems. Alongside this, Job conducts many data management-related activities for a variety of different project such as prevalence surveys and other research projects.

Kerri Viney

Dr Kerri Viney is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, working with Professor Knut Lonnroth on TB patient costs, social protection and the social determinants of TB. She has worked in national TB programmes in several settings, including in: Egypt, Uganda, Australia, the Pacific Islands, the United Kingdom, Cambodia and the Philippines.

Her TB research has focussed on the social determinants of TB including: the association between TB and diabetes, quantifying social and bio-medical risk factors among TB patients, active TB case finding among high risk populations, TB patient costs and social protection. She also has a research interest in human resources for health and public health capacity building. In addition to the IMPACT study, she is currently supporting a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region to conduct TB patient cost surveys, to support measurement of the “catastrophic costs” indicator of the End TB Strategy.

Knut Lonnroth

Knut Lonnroth is leading the translation and policy work package of IMPACT TB. Knut Lönnroth is a medical doctor specialized in social medicine. He is professor of Social medicine at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. He has conducted extensive epidemiological, health systems and social science research on tuberculosis during the past 20 years. He has worked for the Global TB Programme of WHO for 13 years. Among other things, he coordinated the development of a new global TB indictor for the assessment of the economic impact of TB for patients and households. He has also coordinated policy guidance on TB screening, management of TB comorbidities, and social interventions to improve TB detection, adherence and financial risk protection.

Kristi Annerstedt

Kristi Annerstedt works within the Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in global health and also at the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases. She has a background in project management in the private sector and in public health research, where she has coordinated large international multi-country projects. Kristi completed her PhD at Karolinska on social protection and maternal and child health in India.

Kristi will be supporting the work on the IMPACT TB project, particularly the planning and implementing of policy dialogues and liaison with WHO and other stakeholders. She will also support the further development of the SPARKS network as a platform for dissemination and policy translation of IMPACT-TB research findings including communications, governance and planning.

Kritika Dixit

Kritika Dixit is a Research Manager at BNMT with experience of over eight years in infectious diseases, mental health and reproductive and sexual health. Her main area of interest is the social and structural determinants of health and the design and evaluation of socioeconomic interventions to tackle these factors. Ms Dixit led research projects that mainly involve exploring barriers to healthcare access especially in rural areas and to provide evidence to inform patient-centric healthcare models to improve equity in communities. More recently, she led the research implementation in the projects supported by the European Union, the Wellcome Trust, UK, and the Stop TB partnership which aim to increase tuberculosis case diagnosis in Nepal and to develop a locally appropriate socioeconomic support package for TB affected households. She holds a master’s degree in Global Health from Thammasat University, Thailand, and is a current PhD student at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Ms Dixit is a Farrar Foundation fellow and is also a recipient of early career research grant from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) as well as travel scholarships from the RSTMH and the TB Modelling and Analysis Consortium, UK.

Luan Vo

Luan Vo is leading the Intensified case finding implementation for IMPACT TB in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. Luan Vo is CEO and co-founder of FIT. Over the past four years, Luan has worked towards the realization of FIT’s mission, which most recently has entailed leading a community-based TB eradication project in Ho Chi Minh City in collaboration with local implementation partners such as the Public Health Association HCMC, municipal public health and TB control authorities as well as international charities and private sector sponsors.

Prior to Vietnam Luan spent two years with Operation ASHA in India strengthening accounting and HR capabilities, and developing standardized operating procedures and reporting. During the seven years before FIT, Luan first provided two years of pharmaceutical marketing consulting for TargetRx near Philadelphia followed by five years of financial advisory, operational consulting and mergers & acquisitions-related due diligence services at KPMG Frankfurt and New York. Luan holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently candidate for a master’s in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Mahesh Sharma

Mahesh Sharma is a board member for Birat Nepal Medical Trust, the IMPACT TB implementing partner in Nepal. Mahesh Sharma has more than twenty years of experience in programme development and management including policy development in the area of health, HIV/AIDS, TB, community development. He has written a number of successful national proposals to Global Fund for HIV/AIDS and TB. He has worked with Government, Save the Children (UK), BNMT, UNDP in Nepal and has taken HIV/AIDS related assignments in the region (Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, UNAIDS Regional support team at Bangkok).

Manoj Kumar Sah

Manoj Kumar Sah is a District Programme Coordinator at BNMT for the IMPACT TB Project and is based in Mahottari district. Manoj has completed a Masters in Sociology, a Bachelors degree in Education in Health and a Certificate in General Medicine. He has been involved in different public health projects in various districts involved in coordination and management of district level health programme activities (RH, CB-NCP/IMCI & CB-IMNCI, nutrition and HIV/AIDS), health system strengthening, inventory and logistics management, facilitative supervision and monitoring of the programme activities.

Maxine Caws

Max Caws is the Principal Investigator of IMPACT TB and a senior TB researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She was Head of the TB group at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit Vietnam for 11 years and researches diverse aspects of TB including drug resistance, diagnosis, clinical treatment trials, bacterial virulence and host susceptibility determinants. She is currently based in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has a BSc in biochemistry from the University of St Andrews, a PHD in medical microbiology from King’s College, London, where her thesis topic was tuberculous meningitis, and an MSC in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Noemia Teixeira De Siqueira Filha

Noemia Teixeira De Siqueira Filha has recently completed the final year of her PhD in Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and has recently joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as the IMPACT TB Health Economist. Noemia is an Engineer and obtained her diploma and MSc in Health Service Evaluation from the Instituto de Medicina Integral Prof. Fernando Figueira in Brazil. She has been contributing to projects addressing epidemiology, health financing and health economic evaluations of infectious and neglected diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Dengue and Tetanus. Noemia has technical expertise in implementing a range of primary data collection for epidemiological and cost studies, and economic evaluation methods at health care and household level in low and middle-income countries.

Olivia Biermann

Olivia Biermann is a PhD student at Karolinska Institutet. Her PhD project aims at contributing to a better understanding of active tuberculosis case finding implementation in Nepal and Vietnam. The project is part of IMPACT TB’s work package 6, and supervised by Knut Lönnroth, Kerri Viney and Maxine Caws. Previously, Olivia was a consultant in knowledge translation at the WHO Regional Office for Europe (2014-17) where she provided technical support to the Evidence-informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) Europe. Her work included conducting situation analyses of national research-to-policy contexts, designing and facilitating capacity building activities, and producing technical documents. From 2012-14, Olivia was a research assistant in health systems and policy research at Karolinska Institutet. She worked and studied in Ecuador, India, Nicaragua and South Africa, and holds degrees in global health (MSc) and health communication sciences (BSc). In addition to her academic activities, Olivia is Vice-President of the NGO Foundation Human Nature, supporting community-based rural health and development projects in Ecuador, Ghana and Nepal.

Puskar Paudel

Puskar Raj Paudel is the Project Manager of the IMPACT 2 TB project, based in Makwanpur district. He is a monitoring and evaluation and surveillance professional with Masters in Population Studies and Masters in Sociology from TU. He has over 12 years’ experience in project management, team management, logistic planning, monitoring, and evaluation of health & development work in Nepal. He has previously worked in KNCV TB Foundation, Mother and Infant Research Activities (MIRA), the New Era, SSMP/NHSSP, and Mercy Corps Nepal.

He has wide and extensive experience in community-based research projects, including randomized controlled trial (RCT), specifically in the area of maternal and child health, nutrition and tuberculosis issues, disaster risk reduction, cooperative, microenterprise development, and economic development.

Rachel Forse

Rachel Forse is the Program Director of Operations for IMPACT TB in Vietnam and has a Master of Science in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a focus on International Health Systems. Rachel previously worked for Interactive Research and Development (IRD) in Durban, South Africa and Karichi, Pakistan where she established an initiative which focused on building Public-Private partnerships to improve TB case detection and to roll out Xpert MTB/RIF testing on a large scale. She helped establish a sustainable social enterprise model for TB testing and private sector systematic TB and diabetes screening, detection & care which is currently being scaled-up to over 70 districts with support from the Global Fund.

Rachel founded two IRD field offices in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, managing all aspects of the implementation and evaluation of a mHealth deployment. The mHealth app is now being scaled up in 10 countries in Southern Africa via a regional initiative of the Global Fund. She also led a pilot project providing community-based support for patients initiated on new TB drugs (bedaquiline & delamanid) at the provincial TB hospital in Durban which has now been scaled-up through UNITAID’s END -TB project.

Raghu Dhital

Raghu Dhital is the Executive Director of BNMT. He has been involved with Birat Nepal Medical Trust, Nepal since July 2014. His main responsibilities are to oversee the overall activities of BNMT; develop strategies, plans and activities for the all the programs of BNMT; establish good coordination and collaboration with government authorities, District Health Offices, NGO partners and advocates and facilitate the successful implementation of Tuberculosis Control Program.

Before taking this role, Raghu served as the Deputy director of BNMT. He previously worked as Project Manager for IMPACT TB phase I from 2017-2019. He was involved in Britain Nepal Medical Trust as a TB REACH Project Manager from February 2012 to June 2014 and has successfully implemented TB REACH WAVE- 2 project in Nepal. He has also been involved in Active Case Finding through systematic mobilization of community health volunteers and initiated Microscopic Camp in hard to reach areas of Nepal. Raghu’s main interest is to replicate TB REACH Active Case Finding learning in hard to reach areas of Nepal.

Rajan Paudel

Rajan Paudel is a young and energetic public health professional who’s aspiring to be an agent of change to improve lives and well-being especially for people living in rural communities. As a Research Associate, Rajan is primarily responsible for the implementation of the operational researches under the Nick Simon’s Foundation funded IMPACT 2 TB Project. He’s also working for TB READY project implementation funded by Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Farrar Foundation.

Rajan has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Public Health from the Institute of Medicine, Kathmandu. During his internship at BNMT in 2019, he was actively involved in TB contact tracing, data collection, and management, as well as interviewing TB patients in IMPACT TB Project. He also contributed to the mapping of private pharmacies in Chitwan district. His interest lies in health systems research and social protection on diseases of poverty.

Soma Rai Sitling

Soma is a Senior Administrative Assistant/Secretary at Birat Nepal Medical Trust (BNMT) and Project Administrator for the IMPACT TB Project. She has been working at BNMT for the past 6 years and has over 15 years of experience in this field.

Sourya Shrestha

Sourya Shrestha is a Research Associate in the department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.
He received his doctoral training in applied mathematics from University of Michigan, and postdoctoral training in ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases at Michigan and Hopkins, respectively. He is interested in developing mathematical and computational models of infectious disease epidemiology, and to ultimately use them to design and inform data-driven, effective public health intervention strategies. Transmission dynamics of tuberculosis, pneumococcus and dengue virus are primary disease systems that he maintains research interests in.

Suman Chandra Gurung

Suman Chandra Gurung is a Senior Technical Advisor at BNMT Nepal. He is a public health specialist with an MSc Development Management (International Health) from UK, PG Development Management from UK and Bachelor in Public Health, Certificate in General Medicine from TU, Institute of Medicine, Kathmandu, Nepal. He has over 19 years’ experience of health & development work in Nepal, Bangladesh, China and Tibet and employers include BNMT Nepal, IOM Nepal, NHSSP (DFID) Nepal, DHSP (DFID) Nepal, UNDP/UNV Bangladesh, Surmang Foundation Tibet/China, ADRA/Nepal, UMN CDHP Nepal, Save the Children Fund (UK) Nepal.

Suman has had wide and extensive experience of project management, health systems strengthening, planning, monitoring, evaluation, facilitation skills, co-ordination, research and technical assistance to government & External Development Partners (EDPs). He has also been involved in developing guidelines, manuals, resource maps, MoHP staffs job descriptions, proposal developments, curriculums, lesson plans and has trained health workers, volunteers and teachers.

Thanh Do

Thanh Do is an Executive Assistant for the FIT office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She earned her Masters degree in Human Resource Management at the University of East Anglia and prior to joining FIT, Thanh worked at other non-profit organisations, namely GIZ Vietnam, Biogas Programme for the Animal Husbandry Sector in Vietnam and Pathfinder International.

Tom Wingfield

Tom Wingfield is an Infectious Diseases physician and Academic Clinical Lecturer at the institute of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool. He is also affiliated with Karolinska Institutet and LSTMed. Tom has worked with the Innovation for Health and Development research team in shantytown communities in north Lima, Peru. This research created a threshold for catastrophic TB-related costs, endorsed by the WHO in their global strategy.

Tom is currently working with WHO and KI to analyse country-level TB costs data, evaluate the best model for delivery of social protection for TB-affected households, and develop an enhanced socioeconomic intervention tailored to patients with multi-drug resistant TB.