Wenceslaus Kilama

PROF WENCESLAUS L KILAMA, the Director of Public Health, is a retired malaria researcher and Professor of Parasitology and Medical Entomology. He was founder and Managing Trustee of the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET), which he founded and steered as a successor to the Africa Malaria Vaccine Testing Network (AMVTN) in 1995. AMANET led Africa in researching, developing and deploying pertinent malaria intervention tools.

Professor Kilama earned his doctorate in biology from the University of Notre Dame, USA in 1970, and is a Chartered Member of the Alumni Academic Hall of Fame of St. Michael’s College, Vermont, USA. He then returned to Tanzania where he founded and headed the Department of Parasitology and Medical Entomology, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (then the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Dar Es Salaam) in 1970. Dubbed the “Grand Old Man of African Malaria Research”, he has to his credit over one hundred scholarly publications. Before founding AMANET, Prof Kilama founded and became first Director-General of the National Institute for Medical Research of Tanzania, in 1980, a position he held for seventeen years.

Prof. Kilama is, among other things, the former Chair of the Malaria Foundation International; Past Chairperson of the Tanzania Public Health Association; Past President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations; and member of the WHO global Advisory Panel on Health Research. He is Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and has won a number of distinguished professional accolades both nationally and internationally.

He has served in various capacities on numerous committees and task forces for the World Health Organization, the World Bank, US agencies, and the European Commission among others. He is an exceptional advisor for malaria research capacity strengthening throughout Africa, as well as an expert source of knowledge and advice on issues pertaining to both health research ethics and sustainable development in malaria research. With his family he recently founded Esiimi Schools, at Mugana, Missenyi District, where he spends much of his retired life.