Meet the Speakers
(Subject to change)
Joost Hopman
Professor Joost Hopman, MD, PhD, DTM&H,works as the medical director and consultant microbiologist in the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and is appointed as adjunct professor at the University of Lagos, Nigeria.
Since 2020 he chairs the Prevention Committee, that coordinates all prevention projects and programs in the Radboudumc. He acts as a consultant for Doctors without Borders (Médecins sans frontières) Amsterdam. He is an advisory board member of the Infection Control African Network (ICAN) and acted as a board member of the Dutch IPC section of the Netherlands Society of Medical Microbiology (NVMM).
During the COVID-19 pandemic he served as a member of the WHO Environment and Engineering Control Expert Advisor Panel (ECAP) for COVID-19, the WHO ad-hoc COVID-19 IPC expert group and the Federation Medical Specialists (FMS) Guideline development expert group IPC, the Netherlands. Furthermore, he acted in 2020 as chair of the COVID-19 Outbreak Management Team, University Medical Center Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Joost was invited to work as an IPC consultant for World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 and 2015 in the Ebola outbreak response in Geneva and Sierra Leone and this has provided him with valuable experience in international outbreaks. From 2015-2018 he was appointed as a senior extraordinary lecturer in community health at the Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is co-author of more than 50 publications in peer-review journals (among others in NEJM, JAMA network, Lancet infectious disease, EClinicalmedicine), a textbook chapter on patient areas and environmental cleaning and he contributed to WHO, CDC and WIP guidelines.
His research interests focus on prevention and healthcare delivery. It includes the epidemiology and prevention of healthcare-associated infections, new innovative methods of improving implementation of interventions as part of patient safety programs in both high- and low- resource settings and the impact of the hospital-built environment on prevention and patient safety. In 2017-2019 he was a member of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) conference organizing committee. In 2019 Joost served as a consultant for Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) focusing on IPC in the Dutch Caribbean. For his work he was elected as one of the International SHEA ambassadors in 2016 and was awarded with the Radboud University medal for young potentials. In 2023 Joost was awarded as the Kelsey lecturer 2023.
Joost is strongly committed to improve the health system in both high- and low/middle-income countries
Vicky Gentry
Vicky initially graduated from Cardiff University with a BSc (Hons) in Microbiology, with subsequent laboratory experience in the NHS and private sector, before completing her nurse training at the University of Surrey.
Since qualifying as a RGN, she has acquired a wide range of nursing experience in both community and acute healthcare settings.
Her interest in Infection Prevention developed whilst working as a Trauma and Orthopaedics nurse, providing care for patients who had acquired multi-drug-resistant surgical site infections.
Vicky has been working as an Infection Prevention Nurse since 2004, and since 2019, has led the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust IPC Team, as Infection Prevention Nurse Consultant. Her areas of interest lie in epidemiology and prevention of healthcare-associated infection, and innovations in the healthcare built environment to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance.
Jaroslaw Graniewski
Jaroslaw graduated from Silesian Academy of Medicine in Katowice Poland in 1996. In 1997 he started working for the same academy as a university teacher and assistant in Department and Clinic of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Therapy.
In 2003 he passed the specialty exam and became a specialist in anaesthesiology and intensive therapy (equivalent to FRCA). In the same year he was awarded PhD with honours after conducting research “The influence of desflurane on the selected components of the microsomal monooxygenases system of rabbit’s liver”.
In 2005 he moved to the UK and started working for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust where in 2008 he was appointed consultant in anaesthetics and intensive care. Since 2016 he works as such for Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Jaroslaw's main interests are infection control in intensive care, sepsis and septic shock. He currently leads infection control in intensive care unit at Wexham Park Hospital.
Bruna Pitaes
Bruna Pitaes began working as a nurse for Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust in 2011
She has been an ICU Nurse/Sister in the Intensive Therapy unit at Wexham Park Hospital since 2013.
Manjula Meda
Dr Manjula Meda is a consultant in Clinical Microbiology and the Infection Control doctor for Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust a 18800 bed hospital in Surrey.
She completed her Microbiology Specialist registrar training from St. George's Hospital London rotation in 2009, following a number of years in training in Paediatrics in both the UK and in India. Since 2009 Manjula has worked in a Consultant role in microbiology and Infection prevention.
Manjula has been involved with HIS activities since 2015 serving initially as a member in its council and as its Secretary since 2021. She has represented HIS in various committees and national programmes. She is also involved actively in research in IPC and works as a research collaborator in projects with regional University and the UKHSA and as well in supporting clinical research within Frimley Health.
She has managed many large IPC incidents and outbreaks and published widely in this field. She has a special interest in infection prevention and control in the built environment and has experience in managing major incidents especially around water safety in healthcare.