Dr. Sylvia A. Ojoo, MBChB, DTM&H, MRCP is the Faculty Director and Resident Field Director, East Africa for the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Ojoo contributed to establishing the Kenya national framework for the delivery of HIV services through leading development of national operational and practice guidelines for HIV services delivery, including developing the first national manual for management of HIV related opportunistic infections and conditions in response to high mortality for HIV patients starting treatment at the time; this foundation now supports over 1.3 million patients on ART. Through funded programs as principal and co-principal investigator, she provided strategic and technical leadership to the Kenya Ministry for Health to: develop a cost-effective in-service education system that effectively moved training from hotels to health facilities, and includes a national networked advanced disease case-management service; strengthen laboratory systems with accreditation of national public health laboratories, establish an internal peer-managed national quality management system for molecular diagnostics, expand access to HIV molecular diagnostics; expand access to comprehensive HIV prevention care and treatment programs, including developing innovative case-management models for at risk patients, viremia clinics, and the first of its kind comprehensive community-facility linked HIV prevention service for PWID in Kenya.

Dr Ojoo has used these opportunities to mentor other health professionals that have gone on to demonstrate capacity to improve clinical care delivery systems, the ability to equip other healthcare workers with skills and competences required for HIV and tuberculosis services provision and have subsequently become leaders in the field in Kenya and beyond. Dr Ojoo is now focusing her efforts to ensure sustainability of established HIV services particularly in Cameroon and the Kingdom of Eswatini, working through the respective ministries of health and focusing on targeted data use to develop strategies tailored to address the gaps in each of these diverse countries. This includes working with ministries of health towards developing innovative pathways to sustaining the tremendous gains towards the HIV pandemic response at a time when health systems face other health security threats including the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, as well as diminishing external resource streams. Dr Ojoo continues to contribute to HIV clinical guidelines development, writing and review at the international level with WHO (2004-2019), locally in Kenya and in the region.