Anita Zaidi

Anita Zaidi is the director, Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases (EDD) program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The EDD team is focused on eliminating diarrheal diseases mortality and significantly reducing the adverse consequences of diarrheal and enteric infections on children’s health in low and middle-income countries.

Prior to joining the foundation, Anita was the Ruby and Karim Bahudar Ali Jessani Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, at the Aga Khan University. In 2013 Anita became the first recipient of the $1 million Caplow Children’s Prize for work in one of Karachi’s poverty stricken fishing communities to save children’s lives. She was nominated as a notable physician of the year in 2014 by Medscape.

Anita obtained her medical degree from the Aga Khan University in Karachi, residency training in pediatrics and fellowship training in medical microbiology from Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. She undertook further training in pediatric infectious diseases from Children’s Hospital, Boston, Harvard Medical School, and Masters in Tropical Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research has focused on vaccine-preventable illnesses and newborn infections in resource-limited settings, publishing more than a hundred research papers in these areas.