Summary
I am a Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, and an honorary consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
I work between the UK and Harare, Zimbabwe on a portfolio of studies aimed at improving diagnosis, management and prevention of neonatal sepsis in low-resource settings. I'm particularly interested in how we can improve infection prevention and control (IPC) and limit the spread of anti-microbial resistance, despite the challenges of working with few and intermittent resources.
I am part of a multidisciplinary international team led by Michelle Heys at University College London which has co-developed Neotree, a digital quality improvement tool aiming to support clinicians in Malawi and Zimbabwe care for vulnerable neonates while capturing data: since 2018 we have captured data on >20,000 neonates and trained >350 clinicians in four facilities in Malawi and Zimbabwe.
My previous work has included a PhD supervised by Professor Nigel Klein at University College London investigating microbial translocation in children with HIV in Uganda. During my PhD I volunteered to work clinically in the 2014-2015 West African Ebola Virus Disease outbreak, and stayed on to set up the largest paediatric cohort study to date investigating nosocomial transmission of Ebola Virus Disease and outcomes for those children infected with EVD.
I trained in medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge; and UCL Medical School prior to following the Academic Clinical Training Pathway in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, obtaining my Certificate of Completion of Training in 2022.
I'm currently supervising Wellcome and MRC funded PhD students working between Zimbabwe, Uganda and the UK, and would be delighted to hear from potential students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, especially those from low-resource settings.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Chimhini G, Magwenzi M, Fitzgerald FC, 2022, Infection Prevention and Control in low-resource settings: the need for the local, the contextual and the pragmatic, Infection Prevention in Practice, Vol:4, ISSN:2590-0889, Pages:1-2
Wilson E, Gannon H, Chimhini G, et al., 2022, Protocol for an intervention development and pilot implementation evaluation study of an e-health solution to improve newborn care quality and survival in two low-resource settings, Malawi and Zimbabwe: Neotree., Bmj Open, Vol:12, ISSN:2044-6055, Pages:1-8
Chimhuya S, Neal SR, Chimhini G, et al., 2022, Indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic at two tertiary neonatal units in Zimbabwe and Malawi: an interrupted time series analysis., Bmj Open, Vol:12, ISSN:2044-6055, Pages:1-8
Fitzgerald FC, Zingg W, Chimhini G, et al., 2022, The impact of interventions to prevent neonatal healthcare-associated infections in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review., Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Vol:41, ISSN:0891-3668, Pages:S26-S35
Gannon H, Chimhuya S, Chimhini G, et al., 2021, Electronic application to improve management of infections in low-income neonatal units: pilot implementation of the NeoTree beta app in a public sector hospital in Zimbabwe, Bmj Open Quality, Vol:10, ISSN:2399-6641
Fitzgerald F, Wing K, Naveed A, et al., 2018, Development of a pediatric Ebola predictive score, Sierra Leone, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol:24, ISSN:1080-6040, Pages:311-319
Fitzgerald F, Wing K, Naveed A, et al., 2017, Risk in the "Red Zone": outcomes for children admitted to Ebola holding units in Sierra Leone without Ebola virus disease, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol:65, ISSN:1058-4838, Pages:162-165
Church JA, Fitzgerald F, Walker AS, et al., 2015, The expanding role of co-trimoxazole in developing countries, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol:15, ISSN:1473-3099, Pages:327-339