Professor Paul Newton

Paul Newton is an infectious disease doctor and Professor of Tropical Medicine in the Centre for Tropical Medicine & Global Health, Oxford University. He founded with Lao colleagues the Lao-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Wellcome Trust Research Unit (LOMWRU) within Mahosot Hospital, Vientiane, Lao PDR and was director 1999-2019. They built a sustainable team in Lao, with many international collaborations, investigating the epidemiology, optimal diagnostic techniques and treatments for Asian infectious diseases.

They developed a program of medicine quality research within LOMWRU, to answer key questions on the epidemiology, impact and detection of substandard and falsified medical products in Laos and globally. This included alerting the world to the public health dangers of poor quality medicines, conducting innovative forensic analysis to understand falsified medicine origins, evaluating promising portable devices for empowering drug inspectors, developed the first consensus guidelines on the conduct and reporting of medicine quality surveys, organised the first international conference and yearly short courses on Medicine Quality & Public Health and built multinational capacity for clinical and pharmacy research focused in Lao. He was awarded the Medal of Labor by the Lao PDR and is Honorary Professor at the National University of Laos, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Boston University