Like many children in Africa, Tom Achoki suffered from malaria when he was very young.
“I remember my mom kept a small pharmacy in the house so that we were able to be treated,” he says.
His mother’s proactive approach to fighting malaria kept Tom’s miserable fevers from turning into something far worse. Tom hopes his current work at IHME, the Malaria Country Policy Assessment, can increase the effectiveness of malaria interventions for families, communities, and countries across Africa.
The focus of his malaria research is in understanding what works, what doesn’t, and why. He hopes to identify why a country like Zambia has recorded a lot of success, and how other countries can borrow upon and emulate that approach.
“You can’t deal with malaria through geographical borders,” he says. “You have to look at a regional approach. Mosquitoes don’t know borders. They fly across.”
His interest in public health came while he was working as a doctor at the Ministry of Health in his native Kenya. He noticed that many of the patient admissions were due to fevers because of malaria and realized that the key interventions are basically policy issues. He believes that he can contribute to strengthening the institutions and policy-making of African countries, which will translate to supporting health.
While working in the Global Leadership Fellowship Program at the World Economic Forum, he learned of IHME’s fellowship program, and was encouraged to apply and learn more about the organization’s rigorous methods of evaluation.
As part of IHME’s Evaluations work group, Tom brings a wealth of experience researching health programs in sub-Saharan Africa. He hopes that the quantitative skills he develops at IHME will bring him full circle to fight the No. 1 issue facing his native region.
“We’ve finally reached a point where we can actually be able to tackle malaria with increased funding and more effective control tools,” he says. “The next step will be for people like me to take what we learn about what really works and to apply those lessons on the ground.”
