Dr J. Alvar

Jorge ALVAR, Granada (Spain), was graduated in Medicine and got his PhD from the University of Madrid. He obtained a master’s degree in Malaria & Environmental Health in Carabobo University, Venezuela, and a diploma on Tropical Medicine & Parasitology in Hamburg, Germany. He completed a two-year postdoctoral training at Cambridge Univ. UK.

Between 1982-2000, Alvar was working at the Institute of Health Carlos, Ministry of Health, as a scientist first, and then as head of the Department of Parasitology. In this role he confronted a dozen of parasitic epidemics and established the Public Health Laboratory in Equatorial Guinea. From 2000 to 2004 he became Director of the National Centre of Tropical Medicine at the same Institute. 

From 2004 to 2012 he was the head of the Leishmaniasis World Program in the Department of Neglected Tropical Diseases at the WHO, having launched an ambitious strategic plan and specific control programs in East Africa and South Asia. From 2013-now he was the head, and later Senior Adviser, of the drug development program of Leishmaniasis at the philanthropic foundation Drugs for Neglected Disease initiative, Geneva.

J. Alvar has considerable expertise in, and has received awards for, his research in epidemiology, chemotherapy, and diagnosis in Leishmaniasis. He has participated in more than 30 research projects or clinical trials from different national and international research agencies, and cooperation programs in a dozen of countries in four continents. He has a wide publication record spanning over 40 years having been cited more than 26000 times, with a h-index factor of 69. He is member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Spain.