Dr. Leon Bijlmakers

Senior researcher

Leon Bijlmakers’ professional interest is in health policy and health systems research & development. Having worked as a primary health care educator in Burkina Faso in the mid-1980s, as a trainer-cum-researcher with WHO, UNICEF and the Community Medicine Department of the Medical School in Zimbabwe, and subsequently as a freelance public health consultant in Vietnam, he was a consultant with ETC Foundation in his home country The Netherlands for over 14 years. In this capacity he trained health professionals in various countries in small-scale operational research and he advised Governments, donor agencies and NGOs on health programmes and health sector support systems. He takes a special interest in sector-wide approaches towards health development and sector reviews. Leon holds an MSc in Human Nutrition and Public Health from Wageningen University, and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam based on a thesis entitled “Structural adjustment, source of structural adversity – Socio-economic stress, health and child nutritional status in Zimbabwe” (2003). In May 2012, Leon took up the position of senior researcher in International Health at NICHE, where he is now involved in an FP7 funded research project entitled Clinical Officer Surgical Training in Malawi and Zambia (COST-Africa), implemented in a consortium with the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (lead), the College of Medicine in Blantyre and the Surgical Society of Zambia, based at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka.




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