Students Abroad: Peter Suwondo in Ghana

Greetings from Ghana! My name is Peter Suwondo, and I am a second-year MPH student concentrating in infectious disease epidemiology and global health. This summer I am working with a team of parasitologists from the University of Ghana’s Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR). Together, we are conducting a field study in the Kpandai District of Ghana’s Northern Region, screening communities for parasitic intestinal worm infections and investigating emerging anthelminthic drug resistance.

Our team includes microscopists, lab scientists, translators, questionnaire personnel, and other specialists. We currently operate out of a small rural health clinic where, in partnership with the Ghana Health Service, we’ve set up an exciting diagnostic laboratory complete with microscopes, centrifuges, and other scientific equipment transported from biomedical research facilities in Accra. The field lab operates six days per week and has screened more than 200 people so far for parasites such as hookworm and tapeworm. We provide free anti-parasitic treatment to all infected individuals, and the lab double-checks whether each individual is cured following treatment.

The overall goal of our work is to help inform deworming treatment practices in Ghana and other areas where soil-transmitted helminths are endemic. Previous collaborative research between Yale and NMIMR has identified potential emerging anthelminthic drug resistance in human hookworm populations, and we will be keeping a close eye on treatment response and cure rates here in Kpandai. We hope to perform genomic analyses on collected parasites to assess whether local worms display the same drug resistance mutations identified in other districts of Ghana. We also hope to use extensive survey and GIS data to better understand local disease transmission and risk factors important to the spread of these parasites.

In the meantime, I am learning to speak Twi, eating lots of banku, and absorbing as much Ghanaian culture as I can. I am thankful to the MacMillan Center and Lindsay Fellowship for their generous support of our work.