Dr Anna Phillips
Anna Phillips is currently working as the project coordinator for the Geshiyaro Project in Ethiopia. This project has an ‘End Game’ for interrupting transmission of soil-transmitted helminths (STH) and schistosomiasis through mass drug administration and complementary Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) interventions. Initially the investment will be in one region of Ethiopia and develop a cost-effective model for scaling up transmission interruption in all of Ethiopia as well as other countries. Anna is also the Principal Investigator investigating diagnostic tools for Schistosomiasis in Brazil with funding from Newton Funding at the Medical Research Council.
Prior to her current role, Anna worked for eight years at the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) as a Senior Programme Manager in Francophone Africa (Burkina Faso, Niger, Cote D'Ivoire, Rwanda and Madagascar). Her main responsibility was to assist with the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the USAID funded integrated neglected tropical diseases control programme followed by the DFID funded ICOSA schistosomiasis program. Anna was also awarded two Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE) projects in Mozambique and Niger and worked as the Principal Investigator on these two grants from 2010 until 2017. SCORE's goal was to inform efforts to gain control of schistosomiasis in high-prevalence areas.
Anna finished her PhD in January 2009 at Imperial College London, where she focused on the monitoring and evaluation of a large-scale mathematical modelling project of HIV risk behaviour among sexual minorities in Southern India. Prior to that Anna did an MSc at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, completing her dissertation looking at schistosomiasis and malaria co-infections in under 5's on Ukerewe Island, Tanzania. Anna completed her BSc at Edinburgh University where her main focus was parasitology, with a dissertation on schistosomiasis immunology in Zimbabwean pre-school children.