Author Archive

13Jul

Announcing the Senior AfOx Visiting Fellows

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Fellows, General, News

Six researchers from Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Liberia have been awarded the 2020-21 Senior AfOx Visiting Fellowships. Their proposed areas of study cover a range of disciplines: philosophy, history, neuroimaging, astrophysics, public health and research ethics.

Built on the success of the AfOx Visiting Fellows Programme, the Senior AfOx Visiting Fellowships are designed to enable accomplished African researchers to spend up to three academic terms in Oxford to share their expertise broadly with researchers based in Oxford and build broad long-term collaborations between their home institutions and the University of Oxford.

We received over 125 high-quality applications from across the continent, which led to a very competitive multi-stage review and interview process. During their time in Oxford, the Senior AfOx Fellows will work in collaboration with Oxford researchers to advance their work.

Find out more about the Senior AfOx Visiting Fellows below.

Boutheina Kerkeni, Professor, Universitaire de La Manouba and ISAMM Université la Manouba, Tunisia

Project: Combined Quantum chemical and Kinetics Investigations of H2 formation on Molecular Clusters for Astrochemical Interest

Astrochemists have struggled to explain the formation of molecules in a highly dilute environment such as the interstellar medium (ISM). Understanding the chemistry of the interstellar medium can enrich our understanding of the universe and may help to reveal the origin of life.  During this Fellowship, Boutheina will investigate several icy grain models mainly in the form of nanoclusters, with varying composition and sizes using molecular dynamics and sophisticated quantum chemistry tools.

Aim: The goal of this project is to derive fundamental and molecule specific parameters, like IR spectra (to compare o Observations), reaction rates and diffusion barriers. These can then be included in astrochemical models which simulate ice evolution and complexity over realistic typical timescales.

Oxford Collaboration:  Dimitra Rigopoulou, Department of Physics

Boutheina Kerkeni | Universitaire de La Manouba and  ISAMM Université la Manouba, Tunisia

Professor, Department of Physics

Oxford Collaboration:  Dimitra Rigopoulou, Department of Physics

Kalpana Hiralal, Professor, University of Kwazulu –Natal, South Africa

Project: The struggle for gender equality in South Africa’s Road to Democracy

During her Fellowship, Kalpana will critically examine women’s struggles for gender equality in South Africa and the role women played in challenging colonial and apartheid governments and how those historical origins affected their position in the post-apartheid state.  Kalpana’s research argues that during the liberation movement, gender and women’s issues were relegated to the periphery in support of nationalistic goals.

Aim: Kalpana’s research will provide a better understanding of how gender issues were addressed in post nationalistic states, particularly in South Africa. Through publications and by engaging with academics and policy makers, she aims to inform policy, and work with the civic society and youth towards a progressive non-sexist society.

Oxford collaboration: Julia Viebach, African Studies Centre

Kalpana Hiralal | University of Kwazulu –Natal

Professor, Department of History

Oxford Collaboration: Julia Viebach, African Studies Centre

Stephen B. Kennedy, Senior Researcher, University of Liberia, Liberia

Project: Strengthen Research Ethics Committees in Liberia for Genomic Studies

The unprecedented Ebola outbreak, in December 2013 led to an exponential increase in clinical trials in Liberia with complex laboratory procedures for studying human biological samples such as blood and saliva. This has created sub-regional challenges for the design and implementation of complex study protocols to investigate experimental products for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. During the Fellowship, Stephen Kennedy, will address these challenges and directly contribute to strengthening Liberia’s research ethics evaluation processes.

Aim: The proposed study has the potential to strengthen the ethics platform and research environment in the country and provide guidance to the Ministry of Health to inform programs and policies for the governance of biobanking and genomic research.

Oxford Collaboration: Michael Parker & Patricia Kignori, Ethox Centre

Stephen Kennedy |University of Liberia, Liberia

Senior Researcher, UL-PIRE Africa Center & Senior Scientist, Partnership for Research on Ebola Vaccine

Oxford Collaboration: Michael Parker & Patricia Kignori, Ethox Centre

Godwin Inalegwu Ogbole, Associate Professor, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Project: Enhancing clinical decisions that improve outcomes in Africans with stroke and dementia using advanced MRI techniques

Stroke is a major cause of physical and mental disability in Africa, and its management remains a growing problem. Stroke survivors develop significant disability such as post stroke dementia, which affects up to a third of stroke survivors, and progressively worsens despite treatments. In Nigeria, Godwin is working to find effective tools to manage complications caused by stroke. He will investigate imaging modalities including Arterial Spin Labelling with a view to developing capacity for evaluation of cognitive impairments in African stroke survivors.

Aim: This fellowship will enable translation of knowledge between Oxford and Nigeria and other parts of Africa. It will contribute to understanding the distinct patterns of neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases in black Africans.

Oxford Collaboration: Peter Jezzard, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences

Godwin Inalegwu Ogbole | Univeristy of Ibadan, Nigeria

Associate Professor, Department of Radiology

Oxford Collaboration: Peter Jezzard, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences

Workineh Kelbessa Golga, Professor, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Project: Water ethics and its contribution to sustainable water resources management

Water is essential for all forms of life and the ecological conditions that sustain them. However, 785 million people lack access to improved drinking water sources and 2 billion people lack adequate sanitation. Water injustices such as dumping of hazardous wastes into streams, rivers and oceans and unilateral exploitation of international transboundary rivers exacerbate the challenge. While there is extensive work on technical, economic and political approaches to water management, the ethical dimensions of water governance have not received sufficient attention.

Aim: During his Fellowship, Workineh will examine the role of indigenous water ethics in addressing the current water crisis in Africa. He will explore different ethical principles (indigenous and modern) that can play an important role in the management of water resources.

Oxford Collaboration: Roger Crisp, Faculty of Philosophy

Workineh Kelbessa Golga | Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Professor, Department of Philosophy

Oxford Collaboration: Roger Crisp, Faculty of Philosophy

Laetitia Charmaine Rispel, Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Chair, South African Research Chairs Initiative

Project: Research on the Health workforce

A target of SDG 3 is to achieve ‘universal health coverage for all’. An adequately skilled, productive and well-motivated health workforce is essential to achieve this target. Laetitia Rispel will draw data from the WiSDOM (Wits longitudinal Study to Determine the Operation of the labour Market among its health professional graduates) cohort study to generate new knowledge on the career choices and job location decisions of health professionals in South Africa. She will also work on a book project on the nursing crisis in South Africa that uses a historical perspective to shed light on the seemingly dysfunctional and constantly changing health system.

Aim: During the Senior Fellowship, Laetitia will publish the findings of the WISDOM study with the aim of contributing to the development and implementation of national health workforce policies in South Africa. She will complete several chapters of a book on nursing in South Africa during her fellowship.

Oxford Collaboration: Rebecca Surender, Department of Social Policy and Intervention

Laetitia Rispel |University of the Witwatersrand and Chair, South African Research Chairs Initiative, South Africa

Professor, School of Public Health

Oxford collaboration: Rebecca Surender, Department of Social Policy and Intervention

07May

Translating academic learnings to real-world solutions

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in Alumni Profiles, Blog, General, News

The internet has become an integral part of our lives, which has only intensified during these times of self-isolation and social distancing. Terrens Muradzikwa, a digital entrepreneur from Zimbabwe and an MBA student at Said Business School on the Rhodes scholarship, talks to us about the impact of digital technologies in Africa and the creation of the Zimbabwe Covid-19 Support Hub.

We live in a time, which some call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a period that is transforming our lives, reshaping the economy and changing the social and cultural contexts in which we live. Terrens interest in the role of the internet and digital technologies in society and economics, led him to Oxford to study for a MSc in Social Science Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute combined with a MBA from the Said Business School (through the Oxford 1+1 MBA).

 “I believe that digital technologies, when carefully managed, can improve people’s economic lives. For example, they can increase accessibility of financial services to millions of people without formal banking facilities and also facilitate flow of information between small-scale businesses, thereby increasing trade and access to markets.”


-Terrens Muradzikwa

Terrens’ research included regulation of the mobile money industry in Kenya, impact of internet access and lack thereof in the developing world, and the effects of digital technologies on economic development. Now as an MBA student, he is exploring the application of his research in the business and finance world.

Concerned about the spread of fake news about Covd-19 in Zimbabwe and limited access to reliable information about the virus, Terrens co-initiated the Zimbabwe Covid-19 Support Hub with four more students in Oxford and other Zimbabweans based in the country, Botswana, Germany and the UK. The website aims to provide accurate information and facts about the virus from government agencies, the WHO, and doctors. The information is translated to threelocal languages to support public awareness. The website has reached over 200,000 people in Zimbabwe and bought together 30 volunteers across the world, working virtually to support and amplify local efforts to respond to Covid-19 by sharing information, contacts, and by pooling in one place community fund-raising efforts.

“I urge everyone to contribute in ways they are comfortable with. This can be checking on fellow students and work colleagues, sharing tips with family and friends, providing economic support for those severely impacted by the lockdowns and carrying out important medical research. We will get through this together.”


-Terrens Muradzikwa

13Mar

AfOx awards 200 Travel Grants

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Travel Grant recipients, Blog, General, News

This month, we awarded the 200th Travel Grant since our establishment in 2016. The AfOx Travel Grants represent a breadth of emerging research collaborations between researchers based in African institutions and the University of Oxford.  

Initiated with the aim of supporting new collaborations between researchers based in African institutions and the University of Oxford, the AfOx Travel Grants are open to all disciplines, all year round. They allow researchers to meet in either Oxford or an African institution to work together on a collaborative project. 

The AfOx Travel Grants were initiated in August 2016. One of the first Grants was awarded to facilitate a collaboration between the Epilepsy Support Foundation in Zimbabwe and the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford.  


“The AfOx Travel Grant has quite literally, changed the entire focus of the Oxford Epilepsy Research Group. It contributed significantly to our being awarded a £4.9 million grant from NIHR to study epilepsy in sub-Saharan Africa.”


Taurai Kadzviti, National Epilepsy Foundation, Zimbabwe and Arjune Sen and Sloan Mahone, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford  

Since then, we have awarded 200 Travel Grants that have led to research collaborations between 114 African institutions from 32 countries and 70 Oxford based departments.


“I came here to build a new bridge between my home institution in Egypt & the University of Oxford for cutting-edge research in studying genetics and cancer cells.” 


Haitham Shaban, National Research Centre Egypt

Such collaborations have facilitated new breakthroughs in the fields of medical sciences, big data engineering and astrophysics, conserving environments and ecosystems, archaeology, and preservation of ancient languages amongst other research areas.


“The AfOx travel scheme is such a valuable way of bringing together researchers to explore cross-disciplinary work together.” 


Maureen Kelley, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford  

 “The travel grant provided me access to cutting-edge academic research, resources and literature that I may not have had access to otherwise.”


Gill Black, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, South Africa 

To apply for a AfOx Travel Grant visit:
http://www.afox.ox.ac.uk/grants/


07Feb

Reducing antibiotic resistance by establishing pharmacist-prescriber networks

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Travel Grant recipients

AfOx travel grant recipients, Renier Coetzee and Oliver van Hecke are working together to establish a new pharmacist-prescriber network to encourage the appropriate use of antibiotics in the Cape Metro region, South Africa.

Taking antibiotics when we do not need them can cause bacteria in our body to change and become resistant to drugs. This means that at a certain point, bacteria in our body become antibiotic resistant and cannot be effectively killed by antibiotics.

Overprescribing of antibiotics is one of the main risks for developing an antibiotic-resistant infection. Most antibiotics (80%) are prescribed in the community for common infections like respiratory tract infections (typical coughs, sore throat and earache). The more antibiotics are used to treat common infections such as a sore throat, the more likely they will become ineffective for treating conditions that are more serious. Antibiotic-resistant infections mean longer hospital stays, rising healthcare costs and a greater chance of dying.

South Africa’s high burden of infection forms its greatest disease burden. This poses a threat for the country to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, Good Health & Wellbeing, but also affecting its ability to attain other SDGs. In an era of antibiotic resistance, it is critical that patients receive the right antibiotic at the right time with the least harm to present and future patients.

Antimicrobial stewardship programmes have been implemented in hospitals across South Africa and help clinicians reduce overuse and misuse of antibiotics, without affecting patient outcomes. This typically involves educational programmes, the implementation of evidence-based guidelines and audit and feedback for prescribers. However, such efforts have largely been implemented in hospitals rather than in community settings- where most antibiotics are prescribed.

To overcome this problem, Renier Coetzee, a pharmacist at the School of Pharmacy, University of the Western Cape, and Oliver van Hecke, a GP and Postdoc Researcher at the University of Oxford are trying to establish a pharmacist-prescriber network in the region. The aim of the network is to promote evidence-based antibiotic prescribing through a multidisciplinary team or network of doctors, nurses and pharmacists working in in publicly-funded primary care clinics in the greater Cape Metro region, South Africa.

The Cape Metro is a peri-urban region around Cape Town of just over 290km. It includes the townships of Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain with an estimated population of over four million people. The unemployment rate in the area is 30%, with a substantial proportion of households earning less than < £240 (R4800) per annum, and 20% living in informal dwellings. Access to primary care health services is free of charge.

Pharmacists can play an active role in improving the appropriateness of antibiotic prescribing by providing expert advice and raising awareness of guideline-adherence and policy-guided antibiotic prescribing.

“Evidence from high-income countries, suggests pharmacist-prescriber network improves the quality of antibiotic prescribing. However, we were also acutely aware that evidence from one setting is not necessarily transferable to another. By running a workshop with local pharmacists, doctors, nurses working in the community, this exchange has identified areas where and how such a pharmacist-prescriber intervention might work to optimise antibiotic use.”

The AfOx travel grant supported Oliver to travel to South Africa to collaborate with Renier. Together, they held an informative workshop with local pharmacists, doctors and nurses working in the community to see where and how such a pharmacist-prescriber intervention might work to optimise antibiotic prescribing. Renier and Oliver have published their findings in the AOSIS journal, available to read via this link:
https://safpj.co.za/index.php/safpj/article/view/5090

One of the ideas stemming from this workshop was for pharmacists to comment and feedback on the appropriateness of antibiotic prescribing (concordant with prescribing guidance). This was felt would encourage pharmacists to be more actively involved in antibiotic stewardship measures, instead of the more passive activity of dispensing medication.

Renier and Oliver are now applying for further funding to develop some of these ideas.

19Dec

Joining the dots between the classroom and hospital

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in Alumni Profiles, General, News

This week we caught up with Dr Mona Ibrahim. A medical Doctor from Sudan, Mona has just started her new role as a Research Officer at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University after the successful completion of the Masters in International Health and Tropical Medicine.

Mona, who describes herself as “a happy human, with a touch of sarcasm”, gives us a snippet of her life in Oxford, the differences in the learning cultures and her vision in ensuring universal health coverage is a reality in Sudan.

Mona completed her medical degree from the University of Medical Sciences and Technology in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. As part of her training, she took up a life-changing internship at the Um-Dawanban hospital in the outskirts of Khartoum.

The Um-Dawanban hospital covers the town of Um-Dawanban along with four villages in the area, providing medical facilities for a population of 500,000 people. A community with distinctive features from the other predominantly inhibits each village. Mona experienced a beautiful diversity of cultures, traditions and beliefs within the simple building of the Um-Dawanban hospital.

Mona treated patients with nutrient deficiencies, common infections and some who had injuries from road accidents. As

“As a doctor in that region, it was interesting to see how such a diverse set of people had binding commonalities. Everyday at sunset, all the hospital staff- from cleaners to financial managers would come together at the doctor’s office and have coffee and tea together. Those were my favourite moments; it felt like we were family”


However, one thing that stood out for Mona was the clear discrepancies between what she had studied and what she was observing at work.

“As students, we were taught the most idealised version of Medicine. We became very familiar with books that highlighted the latest evidence-based management guidelines. However, with little to no management skills at the hospital, the official international guidelines were nothing but a pretty poster on the wall.”


The gap between the ideal and the reality became Mona’s career-focus and she decided to apply for the MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine in Oxford.

The MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine is a full-time one-year course that explores a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to health in resource-limited contexts. The aim of the course is to develop an understanding of the major global health problems in resource-limited settings and study potential solutions from different disciplinary perspectives such as the ethics, social determinants of health, mathematical modelling and economical evaluations.

The diverse student network of the course, leadership and communications training provided and international placements offered were particularly attractive to Mona.  

Moving to Oxford for her graduate studies was an adventure in itself for Mona. It was the first time she was living by herself amongst other lifestyle changes. The student-led learning and emphasis on critical appraisals was quite different from her previous training, and the college system was both novel and confusing. One of her toughest challenges to overcome in Oxford was the need the match the high expectations and to fit in.

However soon Mona learned to question things like people’s positions, contextual factors and even her own opinions and inherent biases. She learned to embrace her quirky self and to keep pushing to become a better version of herself.

“The knowledge I’ve learnt was just one of many benefits I’ve gained from this course. It taught me to consider the depth of underlying issues that surround health problems. My colleagues came from all around the world and from a range of career backgrounds- it was fascinating to hear their perspectives and see how they solves problems differently. The diversity was beautiful. This environment encouraged me to think at a larger scale, instead of simply seeing a problem through my medical scope”

Since completing her degree, Mona has started working as a Research Officer for the UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents (Accelerate) Hub embedded in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University. Supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund, the aim of the Adolescent’s Hub is to improve outcomes for 20 million adolescents in 34 countries across Africa. Mona is responsible for the Hub’s engagement with the United Nations Development Program to ensure that policy makers consider the evidence provided by the Hub.

 “I believe in my country and in its potential. Through the next few years I aim to become qualified enough to work in health policy. I would like to promote the strategies encouraging universal health coverage and health-in-all policies. I know that Sudan will grow, prosper and become a great nation- I hope to be a part of that.”

17Dec

Supporting the future of ancient archaeobotany

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Fellows

As a student, Alemseged Beldados’ favourite subject was history. He was very keen to understand how human society developed over time, especially the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and agriculture.

However, the study of history does not go beyond a certain period and soon Alem realised to study pre-historic times, he would need to major in Archaeology.

With a DPhil in Environmental Archaeology, Alem is now lecturing Archaeobotany at Addis Ababa University. Archaeobotany is the study of ancient plant remains that helps us understand how people used plants in the past for food, fuel, medicine and building purposes. Alem’s research focuses on human-plant interactions and environmental contexts in the Horn of Africa over the last 5000 years.  

Over the last four years, Alem has been identifying ancient plant remains from two archaeological sites – the Northern part of Ethiopia and at Kassala, border territory between Eritrea and Sudan. Plant remains are an important source of evidence on ancient environments and economies.

In Northern Ethiopia by floating excavated soil from settlement contexts, Alem found remains of wheat and barley dating back to about 1960 BC. Between the border of Ethiopia and Sudan, Alem recovered Sorghum remains. Sorghum is the fifth most popular cereal crop in the world, and is becoming increasingly popular around the world. The remains Alem identified were one of the most ancient sorghum remains in the world.

By analysing such plant remains from settlement contexts, Alem will be able to understand how agriculture started and evolved in these areas, the environmental context and subsistence base of ancient societies.

The excavation, treatment, storage and analysis of plant remains require extra caution. This is because the preserved plant remains are charred/desiccated and often fragile.

“One of the most significant economic revolutions in human prehistory is the transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural lifestyle. My research purpose is to understand that link. Oxford has world class laboratory facilities that are not available back home.”


Alemseged Beldados

In July 2019, Alem visited Oxford as an AfOx Visiting Fellow with the School of Archaeology and St Hugh’s College. He used the Fellowship opportunity to analyse ancient seed remains using the laboratories in the University. By seeing these seeds under microscopes, he was able to study distinct shape and features of different plants. Alem also used scanning electron microscopes and camera mounted microscopes in the University to take pictures of the remains.  The microscopes give clear and publication standard images.

Alem also used his time in Oxford to plan an International conference with Professor Peter Mitchell from Oxford’s School of Archaeology. Taking place in September 2020, the Society of Africanist Archaeologists Conference (SAFA) is expected to draw more than 350 archaeologists from across the world. The meeting will enable archaeologists to update on current research results and discuss on future trends in the study of African Archaeology. Alem is currently an Executive Board Member of SAFA-representing Africa at large.

He has also planned future fieldwork projects and joint publications with colleagues in Oxford to continue the partnership developed during his 8 weeks fellowship stay.

Some of Alem’s recent publications include:

  1. Alemseged Beldados 2018. Climatic Oscillations and Human Adaption in the Last 4000 Years: Studies from Northeast Sudan and the Northern Horn of Africa, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol 50: 1-26.
  2. Alemseged Beldados 2017. Archaeobotanical investigation of Charred and desiccated fruit stones and seeds from Late Holocene contexts in Kassala and its environs: window to past ecology and subsistence, Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, Vol 8:1.
  3. Frank Winchell, Michael Brass, Andrea Manzo, Alemseged Beldados, Valentina Perna, Charlene Murphy, Chris Stevens and Dorian Q Fuller 2018. On the Origin and Dissemination of Domesticated sorghum and Pearl millet across Africa and into India: a view from the Butana Group of the far Eastern Sahel, Journal of African Archaeological Review, Springer Publisher, Vol. 35

The above publications and more are available at
https://www.academia.edu/

17Dec

From the ground up- rebuilding health systems after Ebola

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in Alumni Profiles, Blog, News

We met with Dr Sulaiman Jalloh at the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) office in Oxford. A medical doctor from Sierra Leone, Sulaiman played a critical role in saving lives and crises management during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Since then he has successfully completed the MSc International Health & Tropical Medicine from the University of Oxford and is currently working at IDDO as a Research Intern. Sulaiman tells us about his experience of treating Ebola patients and his ambitions of developing effective public health policies in the future.

Growing up in an environment where it was difficult to access basic facilities such as safe water and healthcare, shaped his ambitions to become a medical doctor. He completed his medical training from the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences at the University of Sierra Leone. The college did not have a central campus, and Sulaiman had to travel to three different hospitals across Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, to attend classes.

After graduating with his medical degree, Sulaiman started working at the Ola During Children’s Hospital located in the Freetown. Ola During Children’s Hospital is the largest paediatric hospital in Sierra Leone with the highest caseload of patients (around 300 a day) in the country.

The outbreak in 2014 was unprecedented and it was the first time that Sierra Leone was experiencing an Ebola epidemic. In 2014, Sierra Leone had only recently emerged from years of civil war and unrest that left basic health infrastructures severely damaged. Weak road systems, transportation services and telecommunications were contributing factors towards the rapid spread of the disease.

During outbreak, Sulaiman was one of the very few doctors in Sierra Leone trained for an Ebola outbreak response in the country.

Sulaiman remembers the first confirmed positive case at the hospital.

 

”We were treating a child for what we thought was malaria. Few days later, an Ebola test for the child came back positive. It was a terrible news; I remember feeling so depressed. This incident led to the shutdown of the hospital as almost all the doctors and nurses working in the hospital were exposed. I was worried about myself, other staff, and other children that we could not treat because of closure of the hospital.”

When the hospital reopened, Sulaiman was appointed as the Clinical Lead of the ‘holding centre’ at the hospital. The holding centre was a facility where patients who presented with Ebola symptoms were first admitted. Sulaiman was working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. He was responsible for treating patients in the red zone (confirmed Ebola cases) and supervising more than 60 frontline staff that included doctors, nurses, and other auxiliary medical staff.

Supervising frontline staff also meant managing their fears, encouraging them and counselling them.  Everyone interacting with patients was at risk of being infected with the disease. At one point, a doctor from the same hospital was infected and eventually passed away. This affected the morale and zeal of other colleagues and Sulaiman had to appear strong and encourage others to ‘keep up the fight’. Sulaiman took on these responsibilities being fully aware that every second could be his last. According to sources, health workers were 21–32 times more likely to be infected with Ebola than the general adult population. An unprecedented number of health workers were infected, with an estimated 221 deaths, which is an about 21% of the overall health work force in Sierra Leone (NCBI, 2019).

 

“I saw many colleagues and friends who got infected and died, I saw an entire family being wiped out. There was no wish or prayer I could make than the deadly outbreak to come to an end.”

As the caseload increased, Sulaiman started doing 24-hour shifts every two days. The hospital was understaffed, with each doctor attending to 9 patients at any given time.

While the international community followed the deadly outbreak on the news, Sulaiman describes the ground reality as ‘very scary and challenging’.

 

“It became very chaotic and scary, the protocol is very different and the work quickly becomes very hectic. You have to be in full Personal Protective Equipment while treating patients. There was an occasion when the googles on my face became foggy and I could not see anything. Sometimes, I drowned in my own sweat when taking off the PPE and these were the very risky situations. ”

Personal Protective Equipment consists of thick protective yellow impermeable suits, rubber boots and respirator masks, two pairs of rubber gloves, thick goggles and rubber full-length aprons to protect doctors from the disease. Being dressed in PPE can get extremely hot in a warm, humid climate, with dehydration and fainting from heat exhaustions being ever-present dangers.

According to a statement made by WHO, total number of 8,704 people were infected and 3,589 people died of Ebola in Sierra Leone. During the Ebola outbreak, Sulaiman and his colleagues worked with the government, local and international NGOs, health partners and other doctors to develop a coordinated response to the outbreak that included treatment procedures.

Reflecting back on his experience, Sulaiman identifies things that could have been done differently to manage the outbreak.

 

 “Our government and the international community were very slow in responding to the outbreak. Just one Ebola case is enough to declare an outbreak and instigate a response.”

Working with different partners, led Sulaiman to realise that many health challenges in Sierra Leone can be solved through a public health approach, rather than individual patient care. This fuelled his passion for research.

In the 2018, Sulaiman came to Oxford to study the MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine course based in the Nuffield Department of Medicine. He was one of the eight Sierra Leoneans awarded the Chevening Scholarship in 2018. The course aims to strengthen a student’s knowledge and understanding of health challenges in resource-limited settings. The course also helped Sulaiman develop his communication and leadership skills.

Now working at IDDO, Sulaiman hopes to prioritise research on treatment and increase the focus on social aspects of Ebola. He is currently developing a system for health researchers to report symptoms and outcomes of patients with emerging infections in a standardised way. This will allow clear characterisation of the progression of the disease and is important to inform the creation of core, defined outcomes for future research.

Talking about his future ambitions, Sulaiman says

 

“My ambition is to work in a research institute where I can contribute to the development of more effective policies and practices. I believe the International Health & Tropical Medicine course has equipped me with skills that could enable me contribute to changes that would help in transforming my country’s health system”

 

17Dec

Studying and preserving Ethiopian treasures

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in Alumni Profiles, Blog, General, News

This week we caught up with Jacopo Gnisci, Researcher of illuminated manuscripts at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Classics. His research focuses on Ethiopian and Eritrean art, theology and culture between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. 

Jacopo is one of the ten recipients of Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship that is jointly awarded by the GETTY Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He will use this fellowship opportunity to work on a book that deals with illuminated Ethiopic manuscripts produced approximately between the years 1270 and 1400.

AfOx: Can you describe your research for us?

Jacopo: Most of my work focuses on cultural artefacts produced within the Ethiopian empire between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries. I am interested in understanding how the formal features of these objects were shaped by material factors, socio-cultural dynamics, and exchanges with other cultures. By highlighting the complex theological significance of certain artworks, I also hope to highlight the creative role of Ethiopian artists and show that the commonly expressed view that they were able, at best, to slavishly copy subjects is pure nonsense.

AfOx: How did you choose the field of Ethiopian and Eritrean art?

Jacopo: I first travelled to Ethiopia in my mid-teens and it was a revelation. I remember enjoying the people’s friendliness towards me and the breath-taking landscapes, but above all I was struck by the devotion of the Christian communities. About ten years later, when I was studying for my MA and had to pick an area to focus on, Ethiopia sprung to my mind as a good option. And, in the very instant in which I thought about it, I had a sort of epiphany and realized that this was an area of research I could devote myself to, it was a bit like love at first sight.

AfOx: What excites you the most in the work you do?

Jacopo: Just one thing? Gosh. Again, I think love is the emotion which best expresses my feelings towards my work, and I consider myself very lucky to be involved in something I really enjoy. I take great pleasure in just looking at the art, but if I had to single something out, I would say that I like trying to understand some of the theological messages that are embedded in it. Examining, or at least attempting to understand, the political aspects and religious values that shaped the creation of visual culture in Ethiopia in the past is a thrilling experience, it is as close as we can get to time travelling!

AfOx: What is the one challenge you are trying to solve by working in this field?

Jacopo: Since the 1960s Western scholarship has made a lot of progress in understanding how colonial ideology affected 20th-century literature of non-Western cultures such as those of Africa. However, when dealing with African traditions one still one come across a great deal of prejudice, even among colleagues. When I read or hear disparaging remarks about the artistic traditions of Ethiopia and Eritrea, I get quite annoyed, but I do my best to point it out politely, since I realise how easy it is to be unaware of our own biases. Over the years, you would be surprised to hear how often I have been told that Ethiopian artists were not as accomplished or creative as Western artists. I typically reply that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that I personally find some fifteenth-century Ethiopian icons far more beautiful than any Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel. So, I guess you could say my main aim is to challenge negative representations of Ethiopian and Eritrean art and to get people to be more interested in the subject.

AfOx: Do you work in collaboration with African researchers? Can you describe the work that you do together?

Jacopo: I have had the fortune to work with some excellent scholars from Ethiopia and Eritrea on more than one occasion. In the past couple of years, the Faculty of Classics has been collaborating with the Bodleian Library and with members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities in the UK to raise awareness about their fascinating traditions through a series of initiatives that have included conferences, talks, and displays of material. The exhibition of Ethiopic manuscripts currently on display at the Bodleian Library, brought me into closer contact with these communities and it was a great experience, I learned a lot. The initiatives I mentioned also included the publication of a volume entitled, Treasures of Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I worked on the volume with several colleagues including the Ethiopian scholar Girma Getahun who is known for his work on Ethiopic Chronicles. We exchanged views on how to best present the material to a non-specialised audience in a way that was informed but also engaging. I am glad I had the opportunity to meet him as a result of this collaboration, because he is one of the nicest people I ever worked with and I hope we will stay in touch in the future.

In partnership with Ethiopian researchers, Jacopo has also co-authored and edited a book on some of the manuscripts on display at the exhibit. The book ‘Treasures of Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’ can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Treasures-Ethiopia-Eritrea-Bodleian-Library/dp/0995494657

17Dec

Preserving indigenous languages

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Fellows, General, News

Audrey Mbogho is from the Wadawida community of about 400,000 people in South-Eastern Kenya, who speak the language of Kidawida. 

Audrey recalls being punished in school for speaking her mother tongue – Kidawida. Teachers thought that speaking native languages in school was a ‘terrible vice’ that interfered with learning English.

Audrey’s parents were both teachers and they encouraged Audrey to be multilingual. She grew up perfecting three languages: Kidawida, English and Swahili, and developed a passion for languages. 

Now, decades later, because of the size of the Wadawida community and the discouragement of younger people from speaking Kidawida, the language is at risk of extinction.

Audrey is currently the Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Pwani University in Kilifi Kenya. In June 2018, Audrey visited Oxford for two months as an AfOx-TORCH Visiting Fellow.

She used the Fellowship opportunity to create a web-based platform called “Ngano”, the Kidawida word for “Stories”. Ngano will use crowdsourcing technologies to allow Kidawida speakers to contribute short stories and audio recordings in their language. Ngano allows Kidawida speakers to contribute children’s stories, news articles, recipes, songs and other fictional and non-fictional writings to preserve the language and culture of the Wadawida.

Audrey created the platform in collaboration with colleagues from The Faculty of Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics at Oxford University.

“There is great value in preserving languages. When you preserve a language, you preserve a culture. You preserve stories, history and knowledge. You are able to use google voice to search for a location in English, but you cannot do it in your mother tongue. That is a disadvantage. I want to equalise the playing field for everyone. There should not be some languages that are considered better than others.”

Audrey has had the idea of developing the platform for many years. However, being the Chair of her department at Pwani University as well as a Lecturer means she has two full time jobs.


“This is the first time in four years that I have been able to work on a research project of my own instead of the routine work that I do at home – preparing lessons, supervising students, signing documents and other admin tasks. So this has been an amazing opportunity to work on a project I have wanted to do desperately”

Back in Kenya, Audrey is now exploring funding sources to promote the project within communities and high schools. She plans to host workshops and encourage people to write short stories for the Ngano platform.

Languages are dying at a very rapid pace. There are around 7000 languages in the world today, however roughly 40% of languages are considered endangered, with less than 1,000 speakers remaining.

Audrey hopes that other language preservation efforts can use similar crowd sourcing platform to keep pace with the threat of loss. The availability of data will create opportunities for postgraduates to take up research in the area of natural language processing for low-resource languages and provide technology-based solutions in this area.

You can view the Ngano platform here: https://kidawida.phon.ox.ac.uk/index.php/Main_Page

Find out more about the AfOx Visiting Fellowship Programme here:
http://www.afox.ox.ac.uk/afox-visiting-fellowships-programme/

Audrey’s publications include:

  1. Mbogho, A., & Marquard, S. (2013). Improving the Transcription of Academic Lectures for Information Retrieval. Proceedings of The 12th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA ’13), Miami, Florida, USA (pp. 560-567). New York: IEEE.
  2. Kivaisi, A., & Mbogho, A. (2012). Web-based Corpus Acquisition. Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Spoken Language Technologies for Under-Resourced Languages (SLTU ’12). Cape Town.
  3. Mbogho, A., & Katz, M. (2010). The Impact of Accents on Automatic Recognition of South African English Speech: A Preliminary Investigation. Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT ’10), Bela Bela, South Africa (pp. 187-192). New York: ACM.
17Dec

Breaking barriers in academia and research

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in AfOx Travel Grant recipients

Louise Bezuidenhout, Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Institute for Science, Innovation and Society and Ola Karrar a Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Khartoum in Sudan first met in the medieval city of Trieste in Italy in the summer of 2017.

At a summer school on Research Data Management, taking place in Trieste, Louise was presenting a lecture on Open Science. Open Science is a worldwide movement to remove barriers to data, publications, software and educational resources.

After Louise’s presentation, Ola asked Louise ‘how can Sudanese academics participate in the Open Science Movement when international sanctions have been placed in the country since 1993?’ This question formed the foundation of a research partnership between Ola and Louise.

While sanctions are often considered as a ‘soft alternative’ to armed conflict, they have impacts beyond their intended remit. Often-overlooked areas affected by sanctions include research and education. Sanctions place invisible barriers against research in countries by limiting access to necessary resources and curtailing their effective use.

Ola and Louise discussed the consequences of financial sanctions on academia in Sudan, and realised that there was a lack of data on the extent of the problem. Their shared commitment towards Open Science and research capacity building in Africa led them to apply for the AfOx Travel Grant in 2018.

The AfOx Travel Grant enabled Ola and Louise to visit each other in both Khartoum and Oxford.

In Khartoum, Ola and Louise held a series of open lectures on the project for students, academics, government and the general public. They designed an online survey that was shared with researchers across universities and research institutions in Sudan to find out the extent to which they felt their work was impacted by international sanctions.

Ola then travelled to Oxford where they analysed the data collected via the surveys. They also collaborated with Any Nobes, Prograame Coordinator at INASP to publish a paper on their findings.

Since 2018, Ola and Louise have published one paper and have received a further GCRF grant to extend their study to other countries under sanctions.

“What became evident from the survey was the pernicious influence of sanctions on academic systems. Isolating academics from research materials and funding provides challenges, but the additional burden of being isolated from the global research community – both offline and online – has long-reaching implications. Urgent need for creative solutions to support Sudanese academics in overcoming this legacy, and a sustained period of engagement is required to identify key skill, resource and capacity shortages. This will ensure that efforts to (re)build academic capacity within Sudan are targeted and effective.  In particular, this will help Sudanese academics to engage with the exciting opportunities that the Open Science movement offers.”

Read Ola and Louise’s paper on Economic sanctions and academia: Overlooked impact and long-term consequences here.

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