A grant from the Task Force for Global Health has been awarded to Dr Dziedzom Komi de Souza, a recipient of TDR’s Clinical Research and Development Fellowship (CRDF), to investigate challenges to eliminating lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem. 
Lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis because of the profound disfigurement it can cause, is a painful disease that threatens 859 million people in 50 countries worldwide.
In 2000 WHO established the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis (GPELF) to eliminate the disease, with mass drug administration (MDA) as a key tool to reach this goal. As of 2018 the Programme was estimated to have contributed to a 74% decline in the number of people infected. However, non-compliance to MDA has remained a critical challenge for elimination. It is this non-compliance that Dziedzom’s team is studying.
The study is following up individuals that missed the previous MDA, while testing and treating those who might be systemically non-compliant or afraid of adverse events. The study is also using MDA registers to help locate non-compliant individuals – an approach that could be adapted for NTD programmes in other countries.
Dziedzom says the grant from the Task Force is especially exciting for him not just because the study is based in Ghana, where he was born and grew up, but because “a successful execution of the project will hopefully get us from proof of concept to widespread implementation” of the approach to non-compliance.
A career where “failure” transformed to success
Dziedzom’s early ambitions had been to become a doctor. “But, fortunately, I didn’t get into medical school,” he says. Feeling a failure at the time, but determined to do something with his life, he applied for a vacation internship position with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) at the University of Ghana. There, he had the good fortune to meet Professors Daniel Boakye and Michael D. Wilson who took him under their wings. “I was very versatile, and they loved it,” he says, adding that after he completed his undergraduate thesis, they asked him to stay on. This proved to be a critical stage of his life during which he acquired lots of field and laboratory experience.
The two mentors funded his PhD, and it was while visiting the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for his research that he met a third mentor, Professor Moses Bockarie. “I was his unofficial postdoc and led some of his field studies in Africa - in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Togo,” says Dziedzom. “Travelling to remote settings in these countries was eye-opening. I learned to appreciate what I took for granted in Ghana.”
A CRDF at FIND
In 2017 Dziedzom successfully applied for the CRDF and was placed at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), in Geneva. During the fellowship, Dziedzom was attached to the NTD programme where he worked on Buruli ulcer and visceral leishmaniasis projects. He also travelled on a monitoring visit for human African trypanosomiasis activities in Uganda. He enjoyed the experience under the supervision of Professor Joseph Ndung’u. “I learned so much more about diagnostics than [just] their development and evaluation,” he says. “For example, there’s a huge component on improving access to diagnostics which I didn’t know about.”
Although Professor Ndung’u offered Dziedzom a job, the terms of his CRDF were that he was required to return home for at least 12 months. Luckily for Dziedzom, the position was still open when he met Professor Ndung’u again some months later. With permission from NMIMR (where he is a senior research fellow), Dziedzom went back to FIND, coordinating Buruli ulcer and visceral leishmaniasis projects as a senior scientific officer.
Future ambitions
Dziedzom’s time at FIND finished at the end of 2021, at which point he returned to Ghana. He recognizes that despite advances the country has a relatively poor infrastructure for research and development. “Anything that is required for a study must be ordered months in advance.” 
Caption: A photo taken by Dziedzom during a field visit to Uganda for research on human African trypanosomiasis
But Dziedzom is not afraid of challenges. Now married and a father of two, a boy and a girl, he has had to learn to cope with adversity from a young age – he was raised by a single mother, a teacher, as one of five children after his father died when he was only six. He has also had to learn to manage his own sickle cell (SS) disease and does not let the condition dictate how he lives his life. He loves to dance and travel, stating “I never let it [SS disease] stop me…I just take a break when I need to.”
He has also learned to focus on what is important: “I love my job! I learned early on to work for job satisfaction and not for money. The travel and adventure that comes with the job just makes it more interesting,” he says. Despite his career success (having published over 70 manuscripts and book chapters and working on some 17 research projects), and supporting the Ghana NTD programme, Dziedzom has further ambitions. “Ghana is rather doing well in terms of research, and I would like to see this increase further. I would like to focus the next three decades of my life and career training a critical mass of young research scientists. I would like to be the most sought-after researcher in my field of work in the next 10 years. My legacy should be the difference and impact I make in the lives of others.”
Dziedzom keeps calm most of the time and does not like to worry. He ends with a philosophical quote from the XIVth Dalai Lama which, perhaps, influences his life and work: “If there is no solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it.”
TDR’s Clinical Research and Development Fellowship (CRDF) allows early- to mid-career researchers in low- and middle-income countries to learn how to conduct clinical trials. Successful applicants are placed for 12 months in host training organizations (pharmaceutical companies, including members of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, product development partnerships, or research organizations) and then receive a reintegration grant for 12 months at their home institution. The fellowship is implemented by TDR, the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. The fellowship is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For more information on the CRDF, please contact Dr Pascal Launois.