Board of Directors

President

Guy Marks is a respiratory and public health physician and epidemiologist. He is President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Guy is Senior Principal Research Fellow at Burnet Institute in Australia. He also serves on the Board of the NCD Alliance and the Federation of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS). He is a former member of the steering committee of the Global Asthma Network. He led the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence) from 2012 to 2022.

He is an Adjunct Professor at UNSW Sydney and an Honorary Professor at University of Sydney. His main research interests are in chronic respiratory disease (asthma and COPD), tuberculosis and protection from airborne hazards (both infectious and non-infectious).

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.

Steve is a paediatrician with University of Melbourne, Australia, with over 30 years of clinical and research experience in global child health in African and Asia-Pacific regions. He has expertise in TB, childhood pneumonia and HIV-related lung disease and is recognised for his global leadership in the detection, treatment and prevention of TB in children and adolescents.

Steve has successfully implemented Union projects, such as the Malawi Child Lung Health Project on child pneumonia management and the DETECT TB project in Uganda that successfully implemented a decentralised model of care for child TB and provided the foundation for the regional Child and Adolescent TB Centre of Excellence.

As technical advisor to The Union on child and adolescent TB and lung health, he has developed implementation tools for The Union to support healthcare workers at all levels of care, such as job aides, manuals and online trainings.

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.

Bess Miller is a physician, epidemiologist, and clinician with over 25 years of experience in public health epidemiology, programme development and scale-up, training, operational research, and clinical care. Her programme specialties have been in the fields of tuberculosis (TB) and AIDS with an emphasis on promoting TB/HIV collaboration, health system strengthening, and TB infection control best practices in HIV/AIDS clinics in Africa and Asia. The majority of her career has been at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

She has extensive experience in leadership, including direction of all CDC TB/HIV-related activities of field and headquarters staff in 45 PEPFAR-supported countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She has worked extensively with The Union and the WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme and has served as President of The Union North American Region, Chair of The Union's Health Sector Reform Working Group and Chair of the Infection Control Working Group for the Stop TB Partnership. She has over 25 years of clinical experience, caring for people with TB.

Dr Miller currently works as an independent global public health consultant and serves on the Board of Directors for the American Friends of The Union.

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 organisations.