Antimicrobial Research Unit

BIOSKETCH
Professor Sabiha Essack (B. Pharm., M. Pharm., PhD) is the South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Antibiotic Resistance and One Health, Professor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and Honorary Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Jordan. She was a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow (1997-8) who undertook research training towards her PhD research at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry in the UK. Professor Essack began her professional career with the B. Pharm degree in 1988 and practiced as a hospital pharmacist for three years in the KZN Dept. of Health before returning to university in 1992 to pursue the M. Pharm and PhD degrees. She established the Antimicrobial Research Unit at UKZN and secured several research grants from the World Health Organization (WHO), Wellcome, the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPI AMR), the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE), the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, the South African MRC and the National Research Foundation (NRF) investigating strategies for the prevention and containment of antibiotic resistance. Her research is published in several high impact journals and was presented at a number of national and international conferences. Professor Essack is lead of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform Action Group on ”Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) on Stewardship across the Lifecycle of Antimicrobials: a One Health Approach”, Senior Implementation Research Advisor at the International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions (ICARS) in Denmark, and, member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Antimicrobial Resistance (STAG-AMR), the World Economic Forum Global Future Council for AMR, the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Partnership on One Health AMR (previously the Joint Programming Initiative on AMR (JPIAMR)), the International Pharmacy Federation (FIP) AMR Commission at The Hague in The Netherlands, and the Wellcome Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug Resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC) in the UK. She is chairperson of the Global Respiratory Infection Partnership (GRIP), vice chairperson of the AMR Insights AMR Ambassadors Network, and serves on the Expert Review Committee for the AMR Benchmark of the Access to Medicines Foundation, the CARB-X Advisory Board and the Fleming Fund Expert Advisory Group. She previously served as co-chair of the Quadripartite Technical Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Integrated Surveillance (QTG-AIS), Vice Chairperson of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on AMR, the FIP Working Group on AMR, the South African Chapter of the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP) and the South African Antibiotic Stewardship Programme. Professor Essack is a member if the Academy of Sciences of South Africa (ASSAf) and served on its Council as Vice President and General Secretary. She served on the WHO Technical Working Group on Health Workforce Education Assessment Tools and on the Advisory Group of the Academic Institutional Membership Dean’s Forum of the FIP’s Education Initiative. She is co-founder and inaugural Chairperson of the South African Committee of Health Sciences Deans. She previously served as Ministerial appointee to the Board of the Office of Health Standards Compliance and the National Health Research Ethics Council. She also served on the National Executive of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa and the Programme Accreditation Panel of the Council for Higher Education. Professor Essack has facilitated a situational analysis of AMR in Botswana and Malawi and co-authored the Botswana, Eritrean and Mauritian National Action Plans on AMR. She was also the AMR lead on the Joint External Evaluation of the Implementation of the International Health Regulations Capacities in Lesotho. Her expert opinion has been sought on the Methodology for the AMR Benchmark developed by the Access to Medicines Foundation, the World Bank Report on “Pulling Together to Beat Superbugs” as well as the WHO Policy Brief on AMR Multi-Sectoral Collaboration, the WHO Global Inter-professional AMR Competency and Curriculum Framework for Health Workers Education and Training, the WHO Stewardship Toolkit for LMICs and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on Environmental Impacts of Antimicrobial Resistance.