Advisory Committee
The Mebendazole Advisory Committee (MAC) is an independent group of experts with a wealth of experience in parasitology, epidemiology, child health, international public health, hygiene education, and environmental sanitation. The MAC advises Children Without Worms and Johnson & Johnson on strategic and technical components of the program, including safe and effective distribution of mebendazole, the selection of recipient countries, and strategies for achieving positive impact and promoting program sustainability.
MAC members include:
Mr. Ibrahim Jabr – Chair
Mr. Jabr is a child health and nutrition specialist. Before retiring, he served as President of the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that worked exclusively towards the elimination of blinding trachoma by the year 2020. He also worked with UNICEF for 30 years as a Senior Program Officer and later, as Country Representative in several African and Asian countries.
Dr. Susan Zimicki - Chair Elect
Dr. Zimicki is a demographer with almost 30 years of experience in child health, child survival, and health behavior change in various countries around the world. She is currently a Senior Program Officer at the Academy for Educational Development (AED) in which she plays a technical advisory role to the USAID Global Avian Influenza Behavior Change and Communications Support Activity. She is also the Director of the AED Infectious Diseases Initiative and was the Director of the CHANGE Project, which identified, developed and evaluated behavior change interventions that can be applied at multiple levels to improve health behaviors. Dr. Zimicki is Chair of the Task Force on Intervention Research at the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and is also a member of the TDR Task Force on Social, Economic and Behavioral Research.
Dr. Vicente Belizario
Dr. Belizario is a medical parasitologist with training and expertise in tropical medicine and public health. He currently serves as the Deputy Director for Research Management and Development in the National Institutes of Health - Philippines and Professor in the Department of Parasitology, College of Public Health, University of the Philippines. He is a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training for Tropical Diseases (TDR). He has more than 40 publications on the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and control of soil-transmitted helminth infections, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, foodborne trematodes and malaria.
Dr. Simon Brooker
Dr. Brooker is a Reader in Tropical Epidemiology in the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust fellowship and is based full-time at the KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Collaborative Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Brooker is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on parasitic diseases in the developing world, including STH, schistosomiasis and malaria. His scientific publications, which number more than 100, cover the fields of epidemiology, disease ecology, medical geography, health economics, and public health control. Dr. Brooker is a Member of the Technical Advisory Board for the Partnership for Child Development, a Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, and a Scientific Advisor for the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative.
Dr. Marielle Snel
Dr. Snel specialises in water and sanitation, with a specific focus on school sanitation and hygiene education. She is currently responsible for coordinating efforts in school sanitation and hygiene education for the IRC International Water and Resource Center. Dr. Snel is also responsible for researching alternative strategies for environmental sanitation and waste management. She has several publications on promoting school sanitation and hygiene education.