Dr Abraham Joseph (1942-) is currently Director of the Schieffelin Leprosy Research and Training Centre in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. Originally from Kerala, he attended Madras and Bombay Universities, where he gained his MBBS, DCH and MD. He has subsequently lectured at Christian Medical College in Vellore from 1973 to 1979. In 1979 he gained an MSc in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health at Columbia University, USA. From 1979 he was first a Reader, and then (from 1983) Professor and Head of the Christian Medical College in Vellore. He became Director of the Schieffelin Leprosy Research and Training Centre in October 2002.

He has particular interests in community primary health care, especially perinatal and child health, and has successfully encouraged the development of community oriented learning programmes at medical universities in Tamil Nadu and Vietnam. He has also employed a computerized health information system to empower community workers to make informed decisions on issues related to health care.

Dr Joseph has acted as consultant for a number of USAID projects and a member of several WHO committees. He has been particularly involved in health care in Vietnam, and is the Senior Advisor to the Government of Vietnam for Primary Health Care. He has spent time as a visiting professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel, and at the Department of International Health at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.

This entry was made 5 July, 2006.