Agendas & Meetings

A meeting was held in Delhi on 13 & 14 May 2019, Project Investigators and the person responsible for financial reporting in each of the partner organisations were invited to attend.  The focus of the first day was to learn about the LSTHM/BMGF protocols for financial reporting and the invoicing requirements. Delegates were invited to a general admin presentation on the 13th May followed by 30 minute one to one sessions during the afternoon and on the afternoon of the 14th May with Mary Cameron and Karen Holland from LSHTM to discuss any specific issues. 

Partners also gave progress presentations on the 13th May and the programme was designed so that there was also an opportunity for theme discussions. All of these sessions were very well attended, interactive and informative.

On the 14th May, the Steering Group members departed to the ICMR offices in Delhi where a face to face Steering Group meeting was hosted by ICMR.

The second SPEAK India consortium meeting was held in Varanasi on April 24th and 25th, 2017. Both national and international delegates attended to present the research proposals they have been developing based on the three identified workpackages, surveillance, transmission and health systems, since the first SPEAK India meeting, held in Delhi in November, 2016. 

The focus of the meeting was operational research, and identifying areas of synergy between the proposals. To this end, the three workpackage leaders presented each proposal related to their designated field during the morning of April 24th. The afternoon of the 24th was devoted to group work, with both workpackage-specific and cross-disciplinary workshops taking place. During these sessions, consortium members received feedback on their proposals, and identified potential areas of duplication and synergy between the proposals. The meeting's first day was concluded with a summary from nominated rapporteurs on the reactions each proposal had received throughout the day.

On the 25th, workpackage leaders presented their updated proposals, and again invited comments from all consortium members on how they should be edited to reflect operational constraints and realities. The meeting was closed with a short session on SPEAK India's achievements to date, and a summary of the activities that need to be undertaken next to support the VL elimination effort.

A full agenda for the two-day meeting can be downloaded here, and a detailed overview of the meetings can be found here.

National and international researchers and operational experts met in New Delhi from 3-5 November to launch the SPEAK India consortium. The consortium will aim to develop a post-elimination agenda for visceral leishmaniasis in the Indian subcontinent, specifically addressing the question ‘what is required to sustain visceral leishmaniasis elimination in India?’ 39 national experts and 14 international delegates attended the three day meeting. During the first day, presentations focused on two of the meetings objectives were given:

• A review the current situation of VL in India (latest surveillance figures from the National Programme and independent partners), and
• Specific challenges relating to VL elimination including criteria of elimination, surveillance, diagnostics, treatment and management

All presentations are available for download here.Over days two and three, group work activities were held to produce output that fulfilled two additional objectives of the meeting:

• Define the research questions for timely implementation of multi-disciplinary research projects in India to improve our understanding of VL transmission through disease modelling and strengthen the post-elimination strategy,
• Formulate a road map to transfer the technology on vector biology, disease modelling and diagnostics from international partners

A full agenda for the meeting can be downloaded here.