Researcher profile

Basu Dev Pandey

By profession, I started my career as a medical doctor in 1991 in Nepal, followed by a PhD in medical virology from Nagasaki University Japan in 2000 and a postgraduate fellowship in vaccinology at Thomas Jefferson University, USA. Since completion as a medical doctor, I have been involved in different positions at the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) of Nepal. When COVID-19 entered Nepal, I was the Director of the Infectious and Tropical Disease Hospital, responsible for the clinical management of cases. I was extensively engaged in the COVID-19 response, particularly surveillance, preparedness, coordination, and response, as a Director of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD), Department of Health Services, MoHP, Nepal, from 2020 to 2021. As a senior-level manager in Nepal's Ministry of Health, I had the opportunity to gain extensive experience in a managerial role in the formulation of health policies and strategies, involvement with stakeholders, the negotiation process, as well as public health functions and work to achieve SDGs. During my 35 years in the government, I worked my way up from the community to the senior management system, which required top-level leadership to have an impact on the activities. The response to the 2015 Greater Earthquake in Nepal, leading a trauma and rehab cluster, provided me with an opportunity to learn more about liaison, stakeholder management, negotiation, and response. I have also been the primary national focal point for the Global Outbreak Response Network (GOARN) of WHO since 2008. I served as a national focal person for International Health Regulation (IHR) during my tenure as a Director of the EDCD, Nepal. Moreover, I had the opportunity to collaborate at several universities in Japan and globally in the field of infectious and tropical diseases. I attended a JICA group training course in research in tropical medicine in 1995. Later, I enrolled as a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Akira Igarashi and was constantly in collaboration with Prof. Koichi Morita in the fields of dengue, Japanese encephalitis (JE), chikungunya, and COVID-19. I also had the opportunity to collaborate on the diagnosis and surveillance of dengue and JE at NIID Japan. I had a long history of collaboration in the field of rotavirus infection, as well as constant advocacy to include the rotavirus vaccine in Nepal's EPI system. The molecular surveillance of the rotavirus study is still underway with Prof. Ryuichiro Atarashi and Dr. Hanae Takatsuki at the University of Miyazaki. Furthermore, I have an ongoing collaboration in the field of leishmaniasis as well as research on the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis and other non-communicable diseases in the high-lander of Mustang, Nepal. We are also working on modeling the spatiotemporal association of dengue and vector emergence in Nepal. Collaboration is underway in tuberculosis with Hokkaido University and international health with the Department of Community and Global Health Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Japan. I collaborate with University College London on climate change and vector-borne diseases. Collaboration of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), Seoul, Korea, study on the use of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) on "enhancing capacity to detect, respond to, and prevent cholera in Nepal" (ECHO-Nepal) and observing the efficacy of OCV is underway. I have attended short course training on dengue, influenza, HIV/AIDS, and an advanced vaccinology course at the International Vaccine Institute, Korea. As a senior trainer for infectious diseases such as dengue, HIV/AIDS, and malaria, I have facilitated several training courses and taught graduate and postgraduate students. I worked as a short-term advisor/consultant for GOARN WHO/WPRO Singapore on projects such as Leprosy and Yaw in Indonesia, Cholera Global Task Force and OCV Geneva, and dengue and malaria in Thailand. I attended the Initiative Against Diarrheal Diseases (IDEA) in Vietnam and the Asia Dengue Network for Vaccine in Manila, Philippines. I have published 140 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to books. I received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nepal Health Research Council in 2020 and the Promotion of Science Award from the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology in 2008. I was involved as a visiting professor of molecular epidemiology at Nagasaki University, Japan from September 2021 until Feb 2023. I have been working as a professor of the DEJIMA Infectious Disease Research Alliance (DIDA) of Nagasaki University since March 2023.