Reem Gaafar, Maysoon Dahab and Rahaf Abukoura

Author: Reem Gaafar, Maysoon Dahab and Rahaf Abukoura

Reem Gaafar, Maysoon Dahab and Rahaf Abukoura

Reem Gaafar is a member of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario Tech University. Over the past 15 years she gained experience across several countries as an ER clinician, public health policy researcher, academic, writer and filmmaker. She has consulted for several entities including the WHO country office in Khartoum, the Transitional Sudanese Government and Federal Ministry of Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and different health communication campaigns in the MENA region. Her experience includes knowledge translation in written and audiovisual form to promote health and citizen empowerment, including social determinants of health, social justice, and advancing the role of women in political change. Reem was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship awarded to published African writers. Maysoon Dahab is Assistant Professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is an infectious disease epidemiologist and the co-director of the Sudan COVID-19 Research Group with almost 20 years of experience, in which she has focused primarily on conducting operational health research programmes in low-income countries especially in crises affected settings. She has worked with partners in Malawi, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Sudan, primarily supporting refugee health operational research with UNCHR across the Middle East, East Africa and Asia. Most recently, she has led research and advocacy efforts on mortality estimations during the 2018-19 uprising in Sudan. Rahaf Abukoura is a pharmacist and a public health professional at the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Department, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Over the past nine years, she has supported the implementation and development of various programmes and research focusing on crisis-affected populations and humanitarian settings in Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, and the UK, focusing on nutrition in emergencies, mental health, antibiotic resistance, Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV), education and Covid-19. In her current role at LSHTM, Rahaf is supporting community-led Covid-19 research and advocacy efforts in Sudan.