Board of Directors

President

Prof Guy Marks is a respiratory and public health physician and epidemiologist. He is President and interim Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. He also serves on the Board of the NCD Alliance.

He has led the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence) since 2012. His main research interests are in chronic respiratory disease (asthma and COPD), tuberculosis control and the adverse health effects of exposure to air pollution.

In 2022, Guy was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, as an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia, for distinguished service to respiratory medicine and research, and to tertiary education.

Vice President

Dr Keren Middelkoop is an experienced clinician working in one of the highest TB and HIV burdened countries in the world. She has worked as a clinical researcher and epidemiologist in this field for nearly 20 years. Her work has spanned a wide range of studies including observational and epidemiological studies and clinical trials.

Keren's early work included exploring the interaction of HIV and TB epidemics at a population level and the impact of HIV antiretroviral therapy on TB rates in communities with high burdens of both diseases. More recent work includes transmission of TB – infection prevalence studies, molecular epidemiology studies and proof of concept studies exploring methods for detecting airborne Mtb in congregate settings.

Most recently she has served as Principal Investigator on clinical trials assessing biomedical interventions for TB prevention – both infection and disease.

Secretary General

Prof Christoph Lange is a pulmonologist and infectious diseases specialist. He is the Medical Director of the Research Centre Borstel, Leibniz Lung Centre, Professor of Respiratory Medicine & International Health at the University of Lübeck, Germany, and Head of the Clinical Tuberculosis Unit of the German Centre for Infection Research.

His broad research interests include the epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, as well as implementation of research findings into clinical practice. He is the founding Chairman of the Tuberculosis Network European Trials Group.

He is one of the clinical leads of the UNITE4TB project, an EU-funded international clinical trials platform for the evaluation of novel anti-tuberculosis medicines operating in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.

Treasurer

Luan is President of Friends for International TB Relief. Luan has supported the Vietnam National TB Control Program in the implementation and evidence generation for active case finding, private sector engagement, social protection and TB prevention.

He contributed to the National Action Plan to End TB, led the 2015-2020 End-term Program Review and is a member of the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism’s technical advisory group on TB. Luan is also a consultant for the Stop TB Partnership.

Luan has a master of public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Prior to public health, Luan worked in financial advisory and pharmaceutical consulting.

Dr Erlina Burhan is a distinguished pulmonologist and lung infection specialist at the Persagabatan General Hospital - Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia.

Focused on clinical work in TB diagnosis and management, she specialises in both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB at Indonesia's national referral hospital for respiratory diseases.

Actively involved in TB research, Erlina contributes to numerous scientific publications nationally and internationally. She is a member of the WHO guideline development group and collaborates with the American Thoracic Society on international standard guidelines for TB care. Erlina also represents the Private Sector Providers Constituency in the Stop TB Partnership.

Dr Horsburgh is Professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Global Health and Medicine at Boston University. He is an experienced TB clinician whose research has focused on TB epidemiology, clinical trials and community engagement in TB elimination.

He was President of the Union North American Region from 2019 to 2021 and Vice President of The Union from 2019 to 2023.

He is currently Co-Chair of The Union’s DR-TB Working Group and Chair of the Steering Committee of RESIST-TB, an international organisation that advocates for global expansion of improved treatment for Drug-resistant TB.

Dr Stephen John has been active in TB, Leprosy and HIV control in Nigeria since 2003, having served as a TB Programme Manager and an HIV Agency Executive Secretary. Stephen is currently a Health Ministry Director of Planning, Research and Statistics.

Stephen has served as a trainer at the National TB and Leprosy Training Center Zaria, Nigeria, a mentor to State TB and Leprosy Programme Managers and a university teacher. He has been a consultant for several organisations and is presently serving as a technical consultant to the United Nations Office for Project Services.

His interest in TB control among key, vulnerable and underserved populations in North East Nigeria has grown over the years.

Stephen is a graduate of Medicine, has a Master of Public Health/International Course in Health Development and a has Professional Diploma in Education.

Evaline Kibuchi is a global health advocate with over 15 years experience. Currently she is the Chief National Coordinator at Stop TB Partnership Kenya and a member of the Civil Society Task Force at the WHO TB team.

Evaline expertise include engaging political leadership and working with media, civil society and the infected and affected communities in TB and lung health.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Post Graduate Diploma in Mass Communications from the University of Nairobi and is completing a Masters of Public Health at Moi University.

She is the Chair of the Board of WACI Health and a board member of Aids Health Care in Kenya.

Dr Edward Nardell is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health, and Associate Physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, USA.

Edward's early career as a pulmonologist at Cambridge Hospital, with an academic focus on tuberculosis, saw him become TB Control Officer. In the early 80s TB outbreaks in a large homeless shelter and a Boston Welfare Office led to a career-long interest in airborne infection, TB in particular, and air disinfection by ventilation, room air cleaners, and germicidal UV.

In 2005 he delved into global TB control in Dr Paul Farmer’s Division of Global Health at Brigham & Woman’s Hospital, to guide MDR-TB treatment in Peru and Russia, and to pursue TB transmission research in a human-to-guinea pig transmission facility in South Africa. At the same time, he headed a Fogarty research training program focused on airborne transmission.

Most recently he has been engaged in Covid-19 transmission research, responding to increased demand for germicidal UV research, including converting the South African facility into a human-to-hamster Covid-19 transmission facility unit to test a variety of interventions.

Dr Ikushi Onozaki is a public health expert as well as a trained physician on respiratory medicine. He is executive adviser at the Japan Anti-TB Association (JATA) and has been an individual member of The Union for more than 30 years.

He has rich experiences in TB care and prevention in TB high-burden countries, assisting national tuberculosis programmes to expand TB service to peripheral and/or marginalised populations.

Ikushi is also a pioneer in implementing TB prevalence surveys and active case detection in resource limited settings. He led the prevalence survey group of the WHO Global Task Force on TB Impact Measurement from 2007 to 2016 to conduct surveys in more than 20 countries in Asia and Africa. He re-joined JATA as a staff member in 2020.

Dr Syed Karam Shah is an expert in tuberculosis control. In 2000, he was appointed as the first National Manager of Pakistan’s Tuberculosis Control Program.

From 2006-2014, he led the WHO TB Control team in Afghanistan. He went on to be WHO Medical Officer in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, assisting 22 countries in planning and implementing the End TB strategy. He was also the coordinator for the Global Fund for Easter Mediterranean Region.

Since 2016, he has been working as Adviser for Communicable Diseases Control in the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination in Pakistan. He has also been leading new initiatives to End TB.

Syed is also a Senior Adviser for Stop TB Partnership Pakistan, has authored several research publications and received the Princess Chichibu Award. He is also a former President of the Pakistan Chest Society.

Richard Warren Shepro is an international lawyer and law professor who teaches at the University of Chicago and is Senior Counsel at the law firm Mayer Brown LLP.

After joining the Union’s Board in 2014 he was a Bureau member and Treasurer from 2017-2023.

He holds degrees from Harvard College, The London School of Economics and Harvard Law School and is a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. Having advised boards of directors for more than 40 years, he is the author of a prominent textbook and has published in Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and the Review of Financial Economics.

He is also an expert in the history and law of gastronomy, subjects he has lectured and published about widely. Professor Shepro is trustee of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery and a director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, Alliance Française de Chicago, and other organizations.