Prof Fred Binka

Professor Binka is the Project Manager for the INDEPTH Malaria Clinical Trials Alliance (MCTA). Before assuming this position, he was the Executive Secretary of the INDEPTH Network.

Professor Binka was the Co-ordinator of the Secretariat, a role he was asked to perform by the Board of Trustees after his two-year term of office as Founding Chair of the outgoing INDEPTH Co-ordinating Committee ended in January.

Prof. Fred Binka became an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Ghana in 2001. The following is a selection of previous positions held by him: Public Health Specialist, Ministry of Health on secondment to the School of Public Health, University of Ghana; Medical Officer, Roll Back Malaria, World Health Organisation, Geneva; Director, Navrongo Health Research Centre. Ministry of Health, Navrongo; Epidemiologist and Head of Fieldwork, Ghana Vitamin A Supplementation Trials; General Duty Medical Officer, Liberty Medical Centre, Abeokuta, Nigeria; and General Duty Medical Officer, Ministry of Health, Ho, Ghana.

From 1996-1998, Professor Binka was a member of the National Malaria Advisory Committee that was set up to advise the Minister of Health on all matters related to Malaria control in Ghana. From 1994-1999, he was Honorary Research Fellow in epidemiology and population sciences at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He has served in various key committees of the World Health Organisation (WHO) including the following: Member, WHO Tropical Disease Research Task force on the Integrated Management of the Sick Child, Malaria; Member, WHO Tropical Disease Research Task force on Research Capability Strengthening; Chairperson, WHO Tropical Disease Research Task force on Malaria and Health Sector Reform; Chairperson, Multilateral Initiative of Malaria and WHO/TDR Task Force on capacity strengthening in Africa; and Member WHO/TDR, Steering Committee on Proof of Principle (PoP) and Steering Committee on Implementation Research (IR).

Professor Binka has also served in several committees of other international NGOs. To name a few examples: Member, International Advisory Committee, PATH CANADA; Member, Board of Directors, African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) Nairobi, Kenya; and Member, Research & Development Task Force, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). He is a founding member of the international network “Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa (MARA)”, which is composed of malaria scientists working to create a continental malaria risk map for Africa. Secretariat based in MRC-Durban, South Africa.

Professor Binka was the first recipient of Rudolf Geigy Award 2001 for excellence in science and for dedication and outstanding contributions to malaria control and health development in Africa. It was awarded by the R. Geigy Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. Fred Binka received his medical degree, an MB. ChB with a credit in community health from the University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana in 1978 and an MPH with distinction from The Hebrew University, Jarusalem, Israel in 1988. In 1997 he received his PhD in epidemiology with a summa cum laude from the University of Basel in Switzerland. Fred Newton Binka was born in 1953 in Ghana. He is married with children