Ilesh Jani - candidate for Clinical Councilor

Ilesh Jani was born in Mozambique in 1973. He obtained his MD degree at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1998. Between 1999 and 2003 he worked on the subject of immunological monitoring of HIV disease in resource-poor settings and contributed to the development of affordable flow cytometric protocols for CD4+ T cell counting. Based on this work, he obtained his PhD in Immunology at the University of London in 2003. In 2004 he was awarded the Janis Giorgi Scientist of Year Award by the Huang Foundation and ISAC.

Since 2003 Ilesh Jani is the Head of the Department of Immunology at the Mozambican National Institute of Health (MNIH), an institution that has both public health and research duties. The Department of Immunology of the MNIH serves as the national reference laboratory for viral diseases (including HIV) and conducts a national program for training in CD4+ T cell counting by flow cytometry as well as a national program for External Quality Assessment for CD4+ T cell counting. Partly based on the successes of these programs, the CD4+ T cell counting network in Mozambique has grown exponentially with an estimated 200,000 tests performed in 2007 as opposed to less than 30,000 in 2004. The Department of Immunology of the MNIH has also recently become involved in clinical research projects where cytometric methods will be utilised to measure immunological outcomes. In this context, Ilesh Jani has gained experience in using both clinical and research applications of cytometric methods in resource-constrained settings as well as in establishing a program for scaling-up the use of clinical cytometry in an African setting.

Statement of Interest

Africa and Asia are continents where the use of analytical cytology methods for both clinical and biological applications is rapidly expanding. In these settings, there is a growing need for technical and scientific guidance in analytical cytology. In parallel, there are also increasing numbers of institutions and scientists willing to develop collaborative projects (in education, program implementation, methods development, biomedical and clinical research, etc) with partners in the US and Europe. I believe ISAC could fulfil a leading role in these processes.

My objectives as an ISAC Clinical Councilor will be:

• To promote the use of analytical cytology in resource-constrained areas of the globe;
• To contribute to the promotion of ISAC membership in the developing world;
• To create opportunities for international collaborative projects that involve scientists/institutions from the developing world and US/Europe.