Pascale Ondoa

Dr Pascale Ondoa is a viro-immunologist with a long experience in the field of HIV. She is currently serving as a senior laboratory scientist at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and development (AIGHD). Dr Ondoa obtained her medical degree in 1992 from the ‘Centre Universitaire des Sciences de la Santé’ (CUSS)’ in Cameroon and worked a few years as a medical officer in a tuberculosis hospital in Yaoundé. She obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Virology) from the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 2001. She completed her post-doc training in the unit of Immunology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp between 2002 and 2009. During this period, Dr Ondoa was mainly involved in the development and evaluation of alternative and affordable methods to monitor HIV disease progression and antiretroviral therapy in resource-poor settings. She was also interested in studying (incomplete or inappropriate) immune restoration upon suppressive anti-HIV treatment. Presently, Dr Ondoa works on several projects evaluating HIV drug resistance in Africa. She also conducts research on laboratory systems, with a specific focus on alleviating barriers to the laboratory workforce in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2012, she is the PI of a WOTRO project addressing historical, social and cultural limiting the contribution of medical laboratory to antenatal care in three countries of West Africa (Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso).