Ms Manana, Pinky

Pinky Manana is a qualified Epidemiologist with five years’ experience in providing expertise in public health and a masters’ degree in Public Health. She has 10-years’ experience in health care services and is a PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has published six articles in international peer-reviewed journals and presented at both national and international conferences. In 2020 she was awarded the Seed grant funding by the University of the Witwatersrand.
In 2015, Manana took a lead in a Knowledge, Attitude and Practices survey, which resulted in drafting of community engagement programs as part of the elimination strategy for malaria that has been used to increase knowledge in vector control strategies in South Africa, in collaboration with the Wits Research Institute for Malaria and the Vector Control Reference Unit at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. In 2017, she worked in collaboration with different stakeholders in the following activities:
1. Participated in the Joint External Evaluation for the International Health Regulation 2005 in collaboration with the National Department of Health for the Centre Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) February to November 2017 to assess readiness status of the country to detect, respond and control outbreaks.
2. Contributed towards the development of the landscape documents, job descriptions and identification of role within the different cadres in the Department of Health for the development of Epidemiology Capacity Building in South Africa.
Recently, she contributed to and supported COVID-19 activities, including investigations and management, surveillance development and monitoring, protocol writing, data analysis and manuscript writing including technical support on COVID-19 vaccination roll out.