Dr. Ambrose Otau  Talisuna has, since 2022, been serving as Senior Health Advisor-Programmes, at the WHO Liaison office (WLO) to the African Union (AU) and the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. Dr Talisuna‘s key role is to support building constructive partnerships with the AU organs such as the Africa CDC and the UNECA to advance the continental public health agenda, including alignment and integration of the workstreams of the WHO African Region clusters for action oriented and strategic engagement with the AU and UNECA and to ensure cross cluster dialogue and collaboration, to reflect the synergy between advancing health security, protecting vulnerable populations and building resilient health systems.

Dr Talisuna is a medical doctor, epidemiologist, and public health expert in global health, working in diverse public health arenas for close to 30 years in developing countries. The public health arenas include public health emergency/disaster preparedness and response, epidemiological surveillance, health information systems, health systems strengthening, health services management, monitoring and evaluation, communicable disease prevention and control, and malaria control and elimination.

 

Between 1996 and 2011, Dr Talisuna held senior management, leadership, and scientific positions at the Uganda Ministry of Health (MoH), the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). At the Uganda MoH, Dr Talisuna served as Senior Epidemiologist, National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), Principal Epidemiologist, Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) division, and Assistant Commissioner (Head), Epidemiology and Surveillance Division. At MMV Dr Talisuna was the first Director for Global Access to antimalaria medicines in Africa. At the University of Antwerp, Dr Talisuna was field coordinator for several multi-country malaria clinical trials and later a senior fellow of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).

 

Between 2011 and early 2016, Dr Talisuna was regional scientific director for Eastern Africa of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) and later senior clinical research fellow at the University Oxford-KEMRI Wellcome Trust Programme.

From 2016 to early 2022, Dr Talisuna served as regional advisor for Global Health Security and International Health Regulations, at the WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, leading the WHO efforts to build and sustain capacities to prevent, timely detect and promptly respond to infectious disease epidemics, pandemics, and other public health emergencies.