Working group Structure

We welcome them to the PPM Working Group and look forward to their leadership and guidance.

Chair of the PPM WG: Prof Madhukar Pai

Prof Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD is a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health at McGill University, Montreal. He is the Director of McGill Global Health Programs, and Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre. Madhu Pai did his medical training and community medicine residency in Vellore, India. He completed his PhD in epidemiology at UC Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the UCSF.

Madhu serves as a Consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He serves on the STAG-TB committee of WHO, Geneva; Scientific Advisory Committee of FIND, Geneva; and Access Advisory Committee of TB Alliance, New York. He serves as the Chair of the Public-Private Mix (PPM) Working Group of the Stop TB Partnership. He is on the editorial boards of Lancet Infectious Diseases, PLoS Medicine, eLife, PLoS ONE, International Journal of TB and Lung Disease, among others.

Madhu’s research is mainly focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, especially in high-burden countries like India and South Africa. His research is supported by grant funding from the Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He has more than 300 publications. He is recipient of the Union Scientific Prize, Chanchlani Global Health Research Award, Haile T. Debas Prize, and David Johnston Faculty & Staff Award. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Vice Chairs of the PPM WG: Dr. SS Lal and Dr. William Wells

Dr. SS Lal (Lal Sadasivan) is the TB Technical Director at PATH, Washington DC and he leads and manages the organization’s global TB portfolio. He oversees the implementation of various TB projects in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe funded by donors especially USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, PEPFAR and a few other private foundations. Lal also serves as the partner representative of the ‘Challenge TB’ project funded by the USAID. He has over 25 years of professional experience working mainly on TB, HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease control programming. Before joining PATH in 2013, he had worked for the Global Fund, Geneva in various roles including Fund Portfolio Manager. He has worked for WHO in East Timor as the Technical Officer (TB and HIV) when he led the establishment of PMDT services by applying PPM strategy. In India, as National Professional Officer (TB-PPM), Lal led the national PPM scale up. As a field officer of WHO in India, Lal had acted as the driving force behind many initial PPM pilot projects in the country. He was instrumental in creating partnerships between the NTP and professional organizations such as Indian Medical Association in addition to many other national organizations/institutions. He has also led major PPM evaluations including economic evaluations. He also has experience in the private as well as government health sectors. He is a WHO-designated TB expert/trainer and has been serving as member of global subgroups on TB PPM and Pediatric TB. He is also a member of the Technical Review Panel (TRP) of the Global Fund, Geneva. Lal is trained as a physician (MBBS) and he has also done MPH and MBA. He has also finished his PhD work in TB PPM and his open defense is waited.

Dr. William Wells, PhD, is a Senior TB Technical Advisor at USAID, where he provides technical guidance globally and to individual countries on TB implementation, with a special focus on Public-Private Mix (PPM) and operations research. He regularly provides programmatic and work-planning guidance across all TB topics to USAID missions and projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, and Myanmar. He has contributed to international guidance on the End TB strategy, social protection, measurement of catastrophic costs for patients, and integration of TB activities into national health insurance. He is the past co-chair and current vice-chair of the Stop TB Partnership’s working group on PPM, and has been a topic and/or team leader on national TB program reviews in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Philippines, and South Africa.

He was formerly the Director, Market Access, at the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance), where he had responsibility for planning and oversight of the organization’s market readiness approach. The resulting research, intelligence, analysis, and stakeholder engagement had an end goal of ensuring successful adoption, availability, and affordability of improved TB regimens. Over several years, he has also provided technical assistance for WHO WPRO and its country offices in Cambodia, Fiji, Lao PDR, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines on HIV programming, Global Fund strategies, and cross-programmatic linkages.

William received his Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of California, San Francisco, and a Master of International Affairs, with a focus on economic and political development and public health, from Columbia University in New York.