Dr. Adrian Hopkins
Director

Dr. Adrian Hopkins joined the Task Force for Child Survival and Development as Director of the Mectizan Donation Program. He grew up in Kent in SE England and completed his medical studies in Dundee in Scotland, graduating from St. Andrews University in 1971. After 4 years of internships and residencies preparing for work in Africa, he began work in 1975 in a rural Baptist Mission Hospital in an area of tropical rain forest called Pimu, Zaire (formerly and now, once again, the “Democratic Republic of Congo”). Pimu was once described by a group of visiting public health specialists as “too rural for rural health care.” He remained there for most of 17 years with some brief spells in Kimpese and in Yakusu, Zaire, and some time at home to complete his medical degree in Ophthalmology. He first used Mectizan to treat patients with ocular onchocerciasis in 1988 at Yakusu.

In 1993, Dr. Hopkins became technical advisor to the Central African Republic Ministry of Health for the National Programme for Onchocerciasis Control and Prevention of Blindness at the Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM). In 1999, in spite of the ongoing civil war, he returned to the Congo to establish the Training Centre for Ophthalmology for Central Africa (CFOAC), which is a center for training midlevel personnel in eye care. Since 1995 he has been Medical Advisor for CBM for the Central African Region and has also been the advisor for Onchocerciasis Control which involved continuous oversight of programs in CAR, DRC, Sudan and Burundi. The latter program is now being transformed into a program for control of Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Dr. Hopkins also served four years on the Technical Consultative Committee of APOC and has completed almost four years as chairperson of the NGDO coordination group for Onchocerciasis Control. He has also been very involved in national planning and implementation of the WHO Vision 2020 program to eliminate avoidable blindness, mostly in French-speaking regions of Africa.

Dr. Hopkins is married to Sylvia and they have three sons (including identical twins) who grew up in DRC and are now all settled in the UK.

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