Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an award wining NGO and non-profit that protects endangered gorillas and other wildlife through One Health approaches. In 2015, she founded Gorilla Conservation Coffee to support farmers living around habitats where gorillas are found. She is an Ashoka Fellow and National Geographic Explorer. Both Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka and CTPH have won a number of awards and the most recent for CTPH is the 2020 Saint Andrews Prize for the Environment. 

After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, in 1996, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka served as the first veterinary officer of Uganda Wildlife Authority, helping to establish its first veterinary department where she led a team that investigated the first human related disease outbreak - scabies, in the then critically endangered mountain gorillas. In 2000, she did a Zoological Medicine Residency and Master in Specialized Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina Zoological Park and North Carolina State University conducting masters research on Tuberculosis at the human/wildlife/livestock interface. Recognizing the need to address human, wildlife and livestock health together, CTPH was established in 2003 to prevent and control zoonotic disease transmission through a One Health approach that includes advocacy, program implementation and research at the human/wildlife/livestock interface including comparative pathogen analysis and community led approaches to prevent, control and reduce the impact of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. CTPH is a member of the Ministry of Health National Disease Taskforce supporting social mobilization and ecological monitoring in managing outbreaks of Anthrax, Ebola, Marburg and COVID-19.  

She has published more than 60 scientific publications and several book chapters and regularly contributes to public media. She was appointed on the taskforce for creating the National Institute of Public Health in Uganda and provides technical advice to the national government-led One Health Platform. In 2020 she joined the Advisory Committee of the International Livestock Research Institute One Health Research, Education and Outreach Centre for Africa (OHRECA). She is currently serving on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Primates Specialist Group - Great Apes Section. She is on the leadership council of Women for the Environment - Africa, and Vice President of the African Primatological Society.