Dr. Ismail Sule is currently contracted to CDC in South Sudan. Dr. Ismail Sule grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda and has been working in public health for about 5 years now. He is a trained physician and has a Master’s in Public Health. He recently returned from a competitive summer program at John Hopkins University where is received training on Health Emergencies in Large Populations. This training has complemented his experience working in South Sudan’s complex environment and better positioned him to public health issues relevant to the area, including communicable disease, flooding, and malnutrition.
How did Dr. Ismail Sule’s interest in public health begin?
Dr. Ismail Sule grew up in a rural community in a resource limited setting. There was a period of his life where he could not walk. This led his mother to seek the help of traditional healers. He recalls a particular visit where razor blades were used as part of the treatment, a procedure that was both painful and frightening for the child. It was at this visit that he promised himself that he would return in the future as a trained physician-so that those in his community with circumstances similar to his would have access to primary healthcare.
What is Dr. Ismail Sule currently working on?
Dr. Ismail Sule is currently working for Integral Global as contractor to CDC South Sudan. He is overseeing a project evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on nutrition programming and works closely with partners from the CDC and Johns Hopkins University.
Another project which he has enjoyed is providing technical support to South Sudan’s Public Health Institute on a disease surveillance, detention, and response program. He has since become a mentor for Public Health fellows from the program as they train in data and surveillance, conduct research projects and deploy to the field. The South Sudan Public Health Institute functions as the focal point for all public health response.
In the next few months, Dr. Sule looks forward to concluding a family MUAC project lead by world vision, nutrition protocol comparison project led by Action Against hunger, and another assessing NGO experiences implementing the covid-19 nutrition program adaptations in South Sudan. These are mixed method studies/evaluations that involves the analysis of secondary data, primary quantitative data, and qualitative data obtained through key informant interviews with stakeholders and focus group discussions with nutrition services beneficiaries in South Sudan. The findings will be submitted for peer review, and possible publication for global audience in peer reviewed journals. These findings are expected to provide policy makers and humanitarian organizations a good understanding on how to best deliver humanitarian assistance in the context of covid-19, and or other emergencies in the future