Prof. Keith Klugman

Professor Keith Klugman is one of the original founders of Wits VIDA and serves as an honorary professor of the research unit. He is the director of the Pneumonia program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and  leads the foundation’s work to reduce deaths from pneumonia, neonatal sepsis, and meningitis in children.

Keith is a past president of the International Society of Infectious Diseases and a past chair of the International Board of the American Society for Microbiology. In 2015, he was elected to membership of the National Academy of Medicine in the United States. He has chaired or served on numerous expert committees for the World Health Organization (WHO), The Wellcome Trust and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is the Emeritus William H. Foege chair of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Global Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

As an MD and PhD specializing in infectious diseases and microbiology, Keith has made major contributions in the field of pneumococcal research, including antimicrobial resistance. His work demonstrating pneumococcal conjugate vaccine efficacy in the developing world has led to interventions that have saved millions of lives, especially in Africa. He has published more than 600 scientific papers which have been cited more than 30,000 times to date.