Secretariat

Dr. Chaki is a Research Scientist and the Chief Executive Director for PAMCA. He received doctoral degree (PhD) in Tropical Infectious Diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He spent most of his time designing and evaluating affordable community based strategies for monitoring and evaluation of programmatic malaria vector control and surveillance in both urban and rural settings across Africa. He has a broad background when it comes to working with the local communities, districts and programs supporting evidence driven decision making, intervention stratification and deployment.

In some of his past work, he investigated the influence of some specific environmental and interventional determinants to operational programs with keen interest in larval source management and in collaboration with other researchers at the Ifakara Health Institute investigated the epidemiological impact of larval control through microbial larvicide application and effective community engagement strategies for sustainable vector control interventions. He further coordinated the malaria risk mapping initiative and collaboratively helped establish the largest quality assured entomological surveillance system covering 186 villages across mainland Tanzania for evaluating the ongoing interventions and promote evidence-driven delivery of vector control programs in Tanzania.

In addition Dr Chaki is interested in innovations for accelerating malaria elimination particularly novel tools for addressing the current and emerging challenges with mosquito vector control such as outdoor biting mosquito vectors that seem to be at the centre of the malaria transmission question at the moment. He is further committed to harnessing the African based entomological capacity to spearhead capacity building for implementing vector control programs through establishing strong coordination mechanism through regional partnerships and knowledge exchange programs.

Dr. Damaris Matoke-Muhia is a molecular biology research scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE). Her research interest is on utilizing genomics in the control vector borne diseases. She holds a PhD in Molecular Medicine from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, MSc in Biotechnology and BSc in Biochemistry. Currently, Dr. Matoke’s research is on malaria and leishmaniasis with a focus on exploring  innovative vector control tools, vector bionomics, insecticide resistance monitoring, population genetic  structure, parasite screening and characterization in correlation with ecological factors, disease epidemiology and climate change.

Dr. Matoke has received a number of local and international research funding. She supervises PhD and
MSc students, and has a passion in mentoring young women in STEM. She is a member of American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Kenya National Malaria Forum, Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) and an Organizing Secretary for the KEMRI Annual Scientific Health (KASH) Conference, among others.

Silas is a medical entomologist with 15 years experience in the study and control of malaria mosquitoes. He started working on malaria vectors during his Master’s degree at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, where he worked on the ecology of larval stages of malaria mosquitoes. He did his PhD at Durham University in UK focusing on the ecology and control of malaria vectors using microbial larvicides in The Gambia.
He continued his research based at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Tanzania where he worked on a project that aimed at improving larviciding efficacy for malaria control by co-opting adult mosquitoes to carry larvicides into their breeding habitats (autodissemination of insecticides). During that time he also participated in a project aiming at designing cheap housing for itinerant rice-farmers who are at high risk of malaria transmission in Tanzania.

Silas has also played a role in supporting National Malaria Control Programs in Zanzibar and Burundi in the area of entomological monitoring, and is a great champion of building the capacity of Africans to address the problems of the continent. He later on worked for the Innovative Vector Control Consortium supporting research projects developing new tools for the control of outdoor malaria transmission. He is supporting a project in Mali investigating the impact of Attractive Toxic Sugar Baits on malaria incidence, and a project in Zanzibar developing Spatial Intelligence Systems (drones and mobile technology) to improve the cost-effectiveness of larviciding operations for malaria elimination.
For the past five years Silas has been co-chairing the Larval Source Management workstream of the Roll Back Malaria Vector Control Working Group. He has been supporting the PAMCA Secretariat for the past two years and will now manage PAMCA’s Scientific Operations.