Public Health

Dr. Sayed Himatt is currently supervising the communicable disease surveillance and COVID-19 case investigation team in the state of Qatar. He is also the team Leader of COVID-19 System Enhancement and Transformation Team (SETT) within at the Ministry of Public Health in Qatar. Dr. Himatt is a public health and communicable diseases control expert with more than 17 years of national and international experience in surveillance, outbreak investigation, Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and communicable disease control programs management.

He is a trusted Consultant with consistent track record in providing high-quality individual and collaborative evaluations, assessments, technical reviews and assistance for several organizations including WHO. Dr. Himatt is serving as a module leader for the communicable disease control module in the Public Health U. He severed as an Academic Secretary for the Public Health Institute in Sudan. Dr. Himatt participated in establishing, leading and evaluating a number of public health projects including Early Warning Alert and Response Network/System (EWARN, EWARS) in war affected areas in Darfur_ Sudan and in Northern Syria. He has an extensive background in leading top-performing teams, developing effective national communicable diseases control programs and strategies in Sudan and Qatar.

He is an experienced team leader for outbreak investigation missions for a wide range of outbreak borne diseases. Dr. Himatt published a number of peer reviewed and conference papers and served as reviewer for several medical journals. He is a medical doctor, licensed Consultant of Community Medicine with a clinical medical doctorate in community medicine and European Master of Science in International Health (Tropical Medicine and Disease Control).

Dr. Abdel Wahed Al Serouri is a professor of Community Health at Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Sana'a University, Yemen. Currently, he is the Technical Advisor of Yemen Field Epidemiology Training Program. Dr Al Serouri has carried out a number of researches, surveys and evaluations of different programs in Yemen, and has a distinguished career in quantitative and qualitative research.

He is an author of six books and more than 50 articles. He worked as public health consultant with many international (e.g. UNICEF, WHO, WB, GTZ, Oxfam, Radda Barnen, DAI, USAID etc..) and national organizations (e.g. SFD, NASMA, HCMC etc..).

Khwaja Mir Islam SAEED has graduated from Kabul Medical University in 2003 while completed his MSc in Health Policy and Management from Aga Khan University in 2006. Furthermore, he is a Field Epidemiologist graduated from two-year Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP) in NIH Pakistan in 2011. He has worked initially as HMIS officer in MoPH and later on, after MSc, continued working as Director for Public Health Training, Director for Disease Early Warning System (DEWS) and Director for Grant and service Contract Management Unit (GCMU) in MoPH for a more than a decade in which he was managing service delivery contracts with NGOs almost all over the country. His key achievements are designing and conducting 7 rounds of Intensive six weeks public health trainings from which more than 1200 health workers graduated.

In addition, he has written a useful and important book in local language on “Introduction to Health Management” which is mostly welcomed by health workers and published twice. He has many research (more than 40) articles published mostly on communicable and noncommunicable disease in national and international journals and also its abstracts have been presented in national and international conferences. During work tenure he has contributed in development of many guidelines, strategies and policies in MoPH. He has been appreciated and granted awards by MoPH as well internal bodies for excellent accomplishments. He has been part of many professional and institutional forums such as institutional review board (IRB), pharmacovigilance board, scientific committees, editorial board of Ghazanfar Medical Journal (GMJ), Emergency Committee of International Health Regulations (IHR) to contribute as an expert in these platforms. Currently he is leading and managing Field Epidemiology Training Program Intermediate in Afghanistan as a Technical Advisor which is supported by CDC and GHD/EMPHNET at Afghanistan National Public Health Institute.

A group of 30 health workers have been graduated successfully in 1st AFETP cohort and the 27 are enrolled in this one-year AFETP 2nd cohort in the country. In this training program theory and practices are taught on epidemiology, biostatistics, researches and, software technology communication. It is a combination of didactic as well as field projects to have mutual benefit for the MoPH as well as trainees themselves. He has actively participated in establishment. During restriction of movements and restriction of activities he took another initiative by establishment of Science, Epidemiology and Research (SER) committee to support technical MoPH in fighting against COVID-19.

Translation and publication of CDC book “Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice” in local language by him provided a best resource for health workers to use. During five months the committee developed and submitted 20 policy briefs despite of written minutes of the meetings which contained important discussion and recommendations

Dr. Walid Alali is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and the Chairperson of the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Faculty of Public Health, Kuwait University, Kuwait. He also serves as a Public Health Advisor for Ministry of Health in Kuwait.

His research interests are in the epidemiology of infectious diseases including emerging pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, and foodborne pathogens. Prior to joining Kuwait University in 2018, Dr. Alali worked at United Arab Emirates University (Al Ain, UAE) and Hamad bin Khalifa University (Qatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar) as an Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator (2014-2017).

He also was an Assistant/Associate Professor of epidemiology (with tenure) at University of Georgia (USA), 2008-2015. He has published 65 peer-reviewed papers (with half as a senior author) in different public health areas and in collaboration with scientists from around the world. Dr. Alali received multiple prestigious awards that recognized his research activities and leadership skills. He has taught, supervised and trained graduate and undergraduate students as well as international scientists in epidemiology and public health.