LSE Health are delighted to announce that our colleague, Dr Lesong Conteh, has been awarded a highly prestigious Wellcome Trust Career Development Award for her project ‘A new era in the African market for diagnostics: capturing health and economic benefits’. This is the first time the CDA has been awarded to an LSE academic.
Having spent her career looking at the economics of infectious diseases and health systems, more recently, Lesong has turned her research focus to the importance of diagnostics in ensuring quality healthcare.
When asked, "Why diagnostics?" she stated, "Diagnostics, particularly simple-to-use tests in community settings, play a crucial role in improving global health by enabling early disease detection, effective treatment, and prevention of drug resistance. Unequal and restricted access to diagnostics has equity and social justice implications."
Over the next six years, this project will explore the impact of improved access to community level and Point of Care (POC) diagnostics with experts across Africa. The funding will help establish a new multidisciplinary team who will work to improve our understanding of access barriers, how diagnostic tools are valued and their potential health and economic benefit, much of which remains unknown and underexplored.
The project will evaluate patterns in individual behaviour, health system realities and regional influences in the context of diagnostic access and use, through a mixed method approach and meaningful collaboration with leading diagnostic experts at:
(i) The Centre for Innovative Drug Development and Therapeutic Trials for Africa (CDT-Africa), University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
(ii) Liselo Labs, Lesotho, and
(iii) DIATROPIX at the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, (IPD), Senegal,
The team will be one of the first to investigate, in a co-ordinated way, the micro-, meso- and wider macro-economic and health benefits of supporting domestic manufacturing of diagnostics across Africa.