Authors

 

Dr Manuel Carballo MPH, DSP, is an epidemiologist and Executive Director of the International Centre for Migration, Health and Development (ICMHD) in Geneva.  He trained at Leeds University in the UK and at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine the USA; he later did post doctoral work and received post doctoral diploma Epidemic Investigation at CDC (USA) and in Social Psychiatry at Tulane and National Institute of Mental Health.  He is a Professor of Clinical Public Health at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health in New York and Adjunct Professor at the Tulane University Payson Center for International Development in New Orleans.  Prior to joining ICMHD Dr Carballo worked with WHO in a number of countries.  He was responsible for the 1981 landmark WHO International Study on Patterns of Breast Feeding and the Quality of Breast Milk and then the development of the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. In 1986 he was one of the three-person team chosen by the Director General of WHO to establish the WHO Global Programme on AIDS (GPA) where he remained until 1992 as Chief of Behavioural Research.  In that position he set up the global surveillance of HIV/AIDS knowledge, attitudes and behaviour which remains part of the current UNAIDS surveillance system, and the first international study of sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS.  During that time he was also responsible for helping 22 countries to set up National Committees on AIDS and he worked with WHO/SEARO and AIMS in India in helping to set up HIV/AIDS research and action activities.  In 1995 he joined ICMHD as Program Coordinator and in 2001 he was appointed Executive Director.  At ICMHD he has been responsible for a number of international research, training and policy initiatives in the area of migration and HIV/AIDS and co-infections such as TB, malaria and viral hepatitis, as well as other challenges such as mother-to-child transmission.  Dr Carballo has led health evaluation missions to Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories, and has been responsible for disaster prevention strategies in Afghanistan and Iran. Following the 2004 tsunami he was involved in a rapid response program in the Maldives that included assessing the reproductive health needs of displaced people and developing a humanitarian program. He is an advisor to UNAIDS on HIV and Security, and also advises the EU, the Council of Europe, ECDC, WHO and UNFPA on HIV-related issues.