Dr Jassat, Waasila

Dr Waasila Jassat (MBBCh, MMed, FCPHM) is a medical doctor and public health medicine specialist. She works at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she leads the DATCOV hospital surveillance for COVID-19 where she analyses COVID-19 hospital admissions, support the Ministerial Advisory Committee and National Incident Management Team in tracking the epidemic, as well as providing data for modelling purposes.
Dr Jassat has also led in conducting a sentinel surveillance study in long-term care homes, a long COVID study, and a sentinel surveillance study in 16 public hospitals to better understand the contribution of non-communicable diseases, namely HIV and TB, to COVID-19 mortality. The DATCOV team has also collaborated with the World Health Organization and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC), providing South African data for pooled global analysis of COVID-19 hospitalisation and long COVID data.
She is currently registered towards a PhD at the University of Western Cape, focused on understanding the gap between health policy and its implementation. She employed a case study analysis of the implementation of the policy framework of drug-resistant TB decentralisation in two provinces, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Dr Jassat has 20-years’ experience in clinical practice, research and management in the South African public health sector and has a strong interest in health systems, particularly in using information for health planning and effective implementation of health programmes.