The ASTMH Annual Meeting 2025
Last month I was lucky enough to be able to attend ASTMH, to be a part of some incredible keynote and panel sessions, meet colleagues and make new connections.
As always, this annual meeting was well attended by more than 3,500 people, covering topics across tropical medicine and global health. Alongside the talks and a chance to get updated on progress in all areas, there were plenty of networking opportunities, events and activities.
Keynote talks
The keynote talks started the conference and the first one by Dr Wafaa El-Sadr was on the topic of HIV. Dr Wafaa El-Sadr charted the decline in HIV infections from the 1980 to 2025 but reminded us of the work yet to do to address the epidemic.
She discussed the early days of the epidemic and how it was happening at a time when health systems were struggling for other reasons. The African continent was seeing high prevalence and a high impact on the lives of people and communities at this time but mobilisation at local levels as well as globally, including patients and healthcare workers, helped improve access to treatment. The public health drive between 2010-2023 meant an increase in millions of people accessing treatment.
“There is no such thing as a magic bullet with HIV – we have to focus on the elements of the health system,” said Dr El-Sadr. The elements listed were workforce strengthening, service delivery tailored to people’s needs, science and innovations, intervention being within reach, laboratories, setting targets, data systems and measuring progress, political will, funding commitment and putting people first.
It seems true that these principles of health systems can be applied to many other health areas in sub–Saharan Africa, Latin and central America.
The discussions at this first session really set the scene for the rest of the meeting and there are many shared challenges around recent restrictions in funding which threaten the advances made in the recent decades. This was talked about in terms of HIV, with over 600,000 deaths a year still from HIV related illness, but also for Malaria, AMR, outbreaks and NCDs.
This and other keynote talks touched upon the importance of global health – for interconnectedness, for discoveries and innovations, sharing of experiences and solutions, humanity, thoughtfulness, compassion and generosity.
One of the keynotes also said, “we must stand strong and united to protect gains made to achieve good health and wellbeing for all”.
The current ASTMH President, Dr David Fidock, spoke about malaria. He mentioned artemisinin resistance starting first in South East Asia around 2009 and then seeing piperaquine resistance in Thailand and western Cambodia around 2017.
He has found that in a wide search there are only around 10,000 articles published about malaria resistance in the last 4 years, so urged us that there is still much work to be done and cited a quote that “solving malaria resistance is not a choice, it’s a job we need to finish”.
David also touched on the cuts to funding by recent governments and how this would affect not only health but also humanitarian relief, education, governance and democracy, security and stabilisation. He mentioned partnerships are key in addressing these challenges.
“Collectively we have to adapt to communicate the value of our science to save lives and reduce inequity.”
Effectively communicating science
There were many sessions I was able to attend at ASTMH. One of the panel discussions I most enjoyed was on the topic of bold diplomacy and the need for an active scientific voice in global health diplomacy.
This session talked about the growing difficulty in getting space for public health messages, and the challenge of fake news and concern in the level of trust in science. One speaker talked of the importance of making emotional connections on social media in order to have a space in which to discuss public health. Speakers urged all of us, in light of fake health news and lack of trust for scientists, to grow our audiences as much as possible, so we have the reputational standing to say things that need to be said.
“Being a good scientific communicator is like being a good parent – you don’t have to be perfect, but you need to show up, you need to say something.”
The speakers urged scientists to not be scared of communicating science to the public as it will make a difference. Despite some of the negative responses, it is needed now.
I was reminded of our past work with our early career researchers to provide guidance of how to communicate their work and a project with DNDi to introduce them to local journalists and writers in India. Given the difficulties in reaching audiences with public health messaging this feels like an area we should continue to explore.
Humanitarian health panel
I also attended a fascinating panel discussion about humanitarian health and its links to climate.
There was a discussion about the importance of data and evidence during conflict situations, and the challenges of obtaining this. We heard about how the situation around conflicts can often lead to under reporting of deaths and also how one of the effects of trauma can mean that in conflict situations it is difficult to get accurate information. In this session, as well as many others, we heard about the useful role mathematical modelling, machine learning and broader AI techniques can play in helping us with innovations, research and in delivery of healthcare.
The closing panel by Professor Kelly Chibale was extremely moving
Professor Chibale cautioned us against the term collaboration in favour of partnership, especially in the context of health innovation partnerships. He advised that all partners involved focus on what they can do from their home institution based on their resources and then rely on other partners to address the remaining gaps. These partnerships are underpinned by mentorship and knowledge transfer system, so all partners benefit. Similarly, he advised the use of the term capacity strengthening not capacity building, as it better reflects the starting position of all partners, including capacity.
Professor Chibale cited a number of case studies of strong partnerships including the setup of H3D centre and Foundation in Cape Town working on infectious diseases drug discovery. Also, the UCT-MMV project in 2009, African led international effort MMV048, MAIDA for Malaria drug development, and Africa Gradient, Genomic Research Approach to Diversity and Optimising Therapeutics.
He mentioned that Africa is the genetically most diverse part of the world, but despite this it has relatively few clinical trials. AI could be useful to leapfrog to discoveries by understanding variants within African genetics and use those in clinical trials.
He ended by reminding us of the important of mutuality in partnerships - mutual interest, mutual responsibility, mutual accountability, mutual respect and mutual trust. The partnership means that everyone brings something to the table.
Links to ASTMH
An important part of the meeting for me was also to spend some time with my counterpart at ASTMH, Jamie Bay Nishi and the new President Dr Terrie E. Taylor about potential ways of work together into the future. With a shared vision and many shared challenges, it’s an important time to be considering our options of working together.
Meeting with our volunteers
We are lucky to have over 1,000 volunteers supporting us from all regions of the world to ensure we can deliver our work. At the meeting I spent time with two of our Associate Editors to talk about their roles in handling papers for our scientific journals. As always, it’s helpful and useful to hear about roles from our volunteers perspectives and any ways we can make improvements.
This is particularly important at the moment as we are in the process of developing and designing our new journal on the topic of AI and its use in global health, particularly for LMICs.
I also had the chance to meet Dr Yaw Afrane, one of our Country Ambassadors, representing Ghana, and talk briefly about this crucial role.
During the conference I also managed to meet one of our Honorary fellows, a past President and two of our Board members, whose roles all help us to deliver our work.
Meeting some of our members and grant awardees
We understand that for many of our members the ASTMH meeting is the chance to share their research through an abstract presentation or poster, and this year I managed to meet two of our members doing just that. I also had the chance to meet a grant awardee Simmoy Noble, supervisor and Global Assessor, Simone Sandiford, and grant applicant, Mario Golding, at the meeting.
Medals and awards presentation
This year our Chalmers Medal was won by Professor Joel Tarning and I had the chance at ASTMH to present him with his medal.
These days, with the challenges of travel cost and visas, it is often harder to have the chance to meet in person and be able to congratulate our medal and award winners for their incredible achievements. It was great to be able to do this for Joel.
Closing remarks from outgoing president, Dr David Fidock
Dr David Fidock, ASTMH’s Past President, left us with great food for thought.
“I leave the meeting with hope. We need to build our partnerships to do the best science we can and to communicate that across communities. In the meeting we’ve focused on partnership, resilience and science. Empathy is also a major driver for our collective mission.”
Attending ASTMH 2025 did feel different in 2025. So many in our community have been directly affected by funding cuts, and they see the potential impact not only on current and new future projects but also on the advances we have made in all areas of global health. The renewed commitment to partnerships, and finding new ways to continue our work, was palpable in many of the discussions I saw and had personally. The hope is that we may be able to utilise technology to help us with the speed of some of these advances, as long as it is also used equitably, and with care.