Who We Are

Kevin Forsyth MB, ChB, MD, PhD, FRACP, FRCPA is an academic pediatrician in Adelaide, South Australia. He has a long history of supporting medical education and research in child health. He is a member of the Standing Committee of the IPA, was the inaugural Dean and Director of Eduction for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, is Chair of the South Australian Medical Education Council, Scientific Chair of the Children's Research Foundation, along with many other academic and child health roles. His research interests are in lung immunology of infants and pertussis, with more than 100 publications.

BSc MD MSc PhD FRCPC

Robert Armstrong is Emeritus Professor at the Aga Khan University and the University of British Columbia. From 2010 to 2020 Prof. Armstrong was the Foundation Dean of the AKU Medical College in Nairobi. Prior to this he was Chair,  Department of Paediatrics at the University of British Columbia and Chief of Pediatrics at the BC Children’s Hospital. Dr. Armstrong’s clinical and research interests are in the area of health services related to children and youth with particular focus on child development and disability and application of population-based strategies for prevention of developmental disorders.  Prof. Armstrong is past President of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine and a founding member and Secretary of the International Aliance of Academies of Child Disability (IAACD). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. 

F. Bruder Stapleton MD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Chair Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington, USA.  A pediatric nephrologist, Dr. Stapleton served as Chair, Associate Dean and Chief Academic Officer at Seattle Children’s from 1996-2018. Previously he was Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Buffalo and Pediatrician-in-Chief of Children’s Hospital of Buffalo. Dr. Stapleton led collaborative education programs between the University of Nairobi and the University of Washington. He chaired the committee to found the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. He has served as the President of the American Pediatric Society and the Association of Pediatric Chairs, as well as the Assistant Secretary-General and Treasurer of the International Pediatric Nephrology Association.

Prof Yu Lung Lau is currently the Chair Professor of Paediatrics and Doris Zimmern Professor in Community Child Health of The University of Hong Kong (HKU). 

Prof Lau is a member of the WHO (WPRO) Technical Advisory Group for Immunisation and Vaccine Preventable Diseases. He is a member of the Advisory Panel on COVID-19 Vaccine for the HKSAR Government.  He is the Chair of Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases and initiated universal childhood PCV vaccination as Chair of Working Group on Pneumococcal Vaccination. He helped introduce the universal screening for maternal HIV infection as Chair of the Scientific Committee on AIDS.

Prof Lau established the Asian Primary Immunodeficiencies Referral Network offering free genetic tests for over 2000 patients in Asia and Africa, and is the Founding President of the Asia Pacific Society for Immunodeficiencies

Haroon Saloojee is a personal (full) professor and head of the Division of Community Paediatrics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and a clinical unit head at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto. He is a past president of the College of Paediatricians of South Africa and the South African Paediatric Association.

His areas of expertise include child nutrition, neonatal health, health science education, health systems organisation and clinical trial design and monitoring. His health science  education interests include curriculum design, assessment and competency-based approaches. He has served as an external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate examinations in Namibia, Malawi, Mauritius, Kuwait and Bahrain among others.

Dr. Maneesh Batra is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology; Adjunct Professor of Global Health; and Associate Program Director for the Pediatric Residency Program at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital.  In addition to his academic and clinical work at the University of Washington, he has been serving as a Newborn Technical and Clinical Consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Program Support Team since 2019 and has been involved with shaping the Small and Sick Newborn work stream.  His scholarly interests include capacity building in resource limited settings, including human resource capacity, and the synthesis of existing solutions and adaptation of interventions to these settings. He was a founding member and is currently a member of the executive steering committee of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors Global Health Learning Community. He is a member of the Education and Training Committee and the Global Health Task Force of the American Board of Pediatrics. He has served on several committees at the World Health Organization.

Rudzani Muloiwa trained as a paediatrician at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital (RCCH) and the University of Cape Town (UCT), obtaining a Fellowship in Paediatrics with the Colleges of Medicines of South Africa (CMSA) in 2004. After this he completed an M.Sc. (Public Health Developing Countries) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He has an interest in infectious diseases with a special emphasis on vaccine preventable diseases (his PhD was explored the epidemiology of pertussis in children). From August 2015 until October 2020 Rudzani, served as the Chief clinician and Director of the Paediatric and Adolescent HIV Clinical Services at Groote Schuur Hospital, a position he left in November 2021 to assume the role of Professor and Head of Department of Paediatrics & Child Health at UCT and the RCCH. Previously he has served as both Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Student Affairs and as Acting Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT. He is a current member of the Vaccines for Africa Initiative (VACFA) which is located within Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT. Since 2017 Rudzani serves as a member of the South Africa National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NAGI) and a steering committee member of the Global Pertussis Initiative (GPI).

A/Professor Amy Gray is a Consultant Paediatrician, Clinician Educator and mixed methods researcher with more than 10 years’ experience in Global Health predominantly in South East Asia. Her PhD evaluated the impact of implementing clinical guidelines on quality of care in Lao PDR. Her ongoing education and research activities in both high and low resources settings focus how to build health worker capacity to deliver quality care, and effective approaches to work-based learning such as on ward rounds. She has consulted for WHO, UNICEF and Save the Children and has ongoing collaborations with the Lao Pediatric Association. She is currently the Director Medical Education and a Consultant Paediatrician at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Australia.

Dr. Valsan Philip Verghese is Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, India. In addition to his academic and clinical work in Pediatrics, he teaches Research Methodology and Research Ethics to residents from all disciplines as faculty member of CMC’s Clinical Epidemiology Unit and is also the Course Coordinator for CMC’s Post-Doctoral Fellowship course in Pediatric Infectious Diseases that he started in 2017. As Deputy Chair of CMC’s Hospital Infection Control Committee he is in charge of pediatric antimicrobial stewardship, annual revisions of the institution’s pediatric empiric antibiotic guidelines and, from 2020, part of the team that formulated and updates CMC’s COVID-19 Infection Prevention and Control Guidelines with direct responsibility for the institution’s Pediatric COVID-19 Testing and Treatment Protocols. 

As faculty member of CMC’s HIV Physician Training course that ran from 2002-2010, Dr. Verghese taught pediatric HIV care to medical officers of India’s National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), was a member of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) National Task Force on pediatric HIV/AIDS formulating pediatric antiretroviral dosing guidelines and editing the NACO/IAP/WHO/UNICEF Manual for Management of HIV/AIDS in Children in 2005.  He has also been a member of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Technical Advisory Group on Acute Encephalitis Syndrome from 2016-17, and is a contributor to the 2ndedition of the World Health Organization (WHO) Surveillance Standards for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases published in 2018. He has been a principal and site investigator in several vaccine trials including pneumococcal and meningococcal vaccines in infants and children, has several publications to his credit, and his current research studies include surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases and identification of novel diagnostic tests and biomarkers in dengue fever and pediatric tuberculosis.  

Gina Oladokun is Professor & Head, Department of Paediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and Consultant Paediatrician at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. She heads the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Department and Coordinates the Paediatric HIV programme of the hospital. She was a member of the Board of the African Network for Care of Children with HIV/AIDS. She chairs the Paediatric Infectious Diseases sub-specialty training programme of the West African College of Physicians. She is the foundation Chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Vice -Chair of the Child TB Steering Committee of the Nigerian National TB Programme and is a trainer on Paediatrics HIV/AIDS, drug susceptible and drug resistant TB for the Federal Ministry of Health. Her research interests are in paediatric HIV, childhood tuberculosis and vaccine preventable diseases. 

Muhammad Yazid Jalaludin is currently The Deputy Dean (Undergraduate Studies) at the Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. He works as a Senior Consultant Paediatrician and Senior Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist at the University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) and as a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya. He is currently the Immediate Past President of the Asia Pacific Paediatric Endocrine Society (APPES 2020-2022) and the Malaysian Paediatric Association (MPA 2019-2021). His research interest is in growth, vitamin D, obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus in children. He holds many national and international research grants, and acts as Scientific Advisor for many multicentre international researches. His work has been published in various academic journals including in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and as textbook chapters. 

Prof Sarath Ranganathan MBChB MRCP FRCPCH FRACP PhD  ATSF  is Stevenson Chair and Head, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Consultant and ex-Director, Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and Head of Respiratory Diseases Research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne. 

Sarath was born in India but raised in the United Kingdom where he undertook specialist training at the Royal Brompton and Great Ormond Street Hospitals in London and completed his PhD at University College, University of London. 

In 2004, Sarath emigrated to Australia to practice paediatric respiratory medicine at the Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia). He served as its Director of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine for seven years. In 2019 he was elected Fellow of the American Thoracic Society for his international leadership in this field. He has collaborations with researchers globally including active projects in India and Vietnam.

His Department oversees postgraduate training in Paediatrics as well as responsibility for approximately 120 PhD candidates per year undertaking research into aspects of paediatrics and child health.