Hamidah Hussain (Late)

Dr. Hamidah Hussain passed away in October 2022. This introduction stands in memory of her contributions as a founding director of IRD Global.

Dr. Hussain was a public health professional with over two decades of experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating global health service delivery programs and epidemiological research in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa. Her portfolio included her work on active case finding for susceptible and drug resistant TB, childhood TB, TB preventive services, childhood vaccines, and preventable diseases, Malaria control programs along with costing and cost effectiveness of these interventions.

She led the IRD’s flagship TB program based at the Indus Hospital in Karachi and was instrumental in scaling DR-TB treatment services in two provinces of Pakistan. She was also part of the team that received The Global Fund grant on TB and Malaria as Principal Recipient. Dr. Hussain was the Global Technical Lead for IRD’s TB Preventive treatment programs and have assisted Pakistan and Afghanistan to draft their national TB preventive treatment guidelines.

She was the founding country director for IRD Bangladesh where she also served as the senior strategy advisor to the National TB Control Program providing leadership in establishing vision and technical direction of USAID funded Challenge TB project. Previously, Dr. Hussain worked at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and BRAC in Bangladesh. Dr. Hussain received an MBBS. medical degree from The Aga Khan University, MSc, Master in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and PhD in health economics from University of Bergen, Norway.