Dr Lazarus Kuonza heads the South African Field Epidemiology Training Programme (SAFETP) at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. He provides leadership to the team responsible for coordinating academic and field training components of the Frontline-FETP and the Advanced-FETP tiers of the program.

Dr Kuonza has extensive experience in training and mentoring health professionals in areas of applied epidemiology and biostatistics, public health surveillance, epidemic preparedness and response, and using epidemiology for data-driven decision making in public health programs. He holds joint appointments as Senior Lecturer with the schools of public health of the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria. He serves on Subcommittees of the Board of the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), and on numerous expert committees on various aspects of epidemiology, surveillance and epidemic response.

Dr Kuonza’s main area of interest is in strengthening disease surveillance systems to ensure public health security, with a particular focus on harnessing new digital technologies to support the collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data for timely public health action. He has a passion for developing young scientists, and is actively involved in undergraduate and postgraduate public health training in several local and international universities