The Joint Training Programme of the MRC Centre in Environment and Health and NIHR HPRUs in Environmental Exposures and Health and in Chemical and Radiation Threats and Hazards is honoured to present the fifth International Distinguished Lecture from Dr Adelheid Onyango and Dr Brama KONE with title “WHO’s work on climate change and health in Africa and the politics of health in the global climate agenda” on Thursday 10 April 2025.
Dr. Adelheid Onyango is the Universal Health Coverage/Healthier Populations Cluster Director at the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. She provides strategic leadership on creating safe and equitable societies by addressing multidimensional determinants of health, reducing risk factors through multisectoral action, and creating healthy settings using the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach. She holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Master of Science and doctorate degrees in nutrition from McGill University in Canada. Her career spans academia, research and public health policy and programming.
Dr Brama KONE is the regional Advisor for Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization African regional office (WHO-AFRO) since October 2021. By training, Dr Kone is an Associate Professor in Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Epidemiology of the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES). Before joining WHO-AFRO, Dr Kone was a lecturer and researcher at the university Peleforo Gon Coulibaly in Côte d’Ivoire and researcher, project leader at the Swiss Centre for Scientific Research in Côte d’Ivoire for almost 20 years. He stood from 2013 to 2021 as adjunct lecturer of public health and disaster risk management at the university of Lomé (Togo) in the frame of the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL). Dr Kone’s research interests include health risk associated to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) as well as climate change adaptation. He authored and co-authored some fifty peer reviewed papers and book chapters and led west Africa regional research projects on climate change and health from 2009 to 2021. Dr Kone served as member of the International Association for Ecology and Health; of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and of the Future Earth Health Knowledge Action Network (Health KAN)