Donald Thea

Dr. Thea received his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and was trained in tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene and infectious diseases at New England Medical Center. He has pursued a full time career in both domestic and international clinical and epidemiological infectious disease research, primarily in issues related to child survival and in particular mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Thea was an early member of Project SIDA (Kinshasa, Zaire), the first international clinical AIDS field site, where he did work on the etiology of diarrhea in perinatally acquired HIV infection and was the director of the Clinical Research Unit. He pursued his interest in perinatal transmission of HIV as the Principal Investigator of the New York City Collaborative Perinatal HIV Transmission Study.

In 1998 he then joined the Health and Social Development Unit of the Harvard Institute for International Development where he focused on international field research in Acute Respiratory Illness, Malaria and HIV. Dr. Thea joined the International Health department along with the other members of the Harvard team where he is currently a Professor of International Health and the Director of the Clinical Sciences Unit within the Center for International Health and Development (CIHD). In this capacity, Dr. Thea provides senior technical leadership of a portfolio of projects addressing community treatment of neonatal sepsis, management of acute respiratory illness in children, community and facilities-based management of acute malaria, presumptive prophylaxis of malaria in pregnancy, social and behavioral aspects of HIV transmission and child sexual abuse. Dr. Thea is the Principal Investigator of several studies and projects including a prospective cohort study of postnatal HIV through breastmilk (the Zambia Exclusive Breastfeeding Study), the Zambia Boston University Malaria Project ZAMBUMP, the Boston University PMTCT Integration Projects – Southern Province Zambia.