Deputy Director, Global Health
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Seattle, WA, United States
Padmini Srikantiah is a Deputy Director in Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Srikantiah serves as the lead for the foundation’s cross-cutting Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) strategy, which is focused on preventing mortality due to high AMR risk pathogens in low and middle-income country populations. During her time at the foundation, her work has included surveillance to support global burden of disease estimates for AMR associated and attributable mortality, as well as key surveillance efforts in multiple low-and-middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia that have significantly deepened global understanding of drug resistant pathogens as leading etiologies of neonatal sepsis and related deaths in these geographies. Her current work includes efforts to prevent neonatal sepsis by developing a maternal vaccine against Klebsiella pneumoniae as well as investments and partnerships with the Combatting Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Accelerator (CARB-X) supporting preventive interventions (vaccines, prophylactic monoclonal antibodies, and microbiome-based approaches) to address AMR. She has led the foundation’s initiative on vaccines to address AMR, which includes work to quantify the impact of vaccines to reduce resistant pathogens and antibiotic use through modelling analyses as well as engagement with WHO to establish their framework on vaccines and AMR.
Padmini also leads the foundation’s initiative to address respiratory syncytial virus, the leading cause of pneumonia in young infants globally, Her work here includes mortality surveillance that has redefined the burden of RSV mortality in young infants and children globally, product development focused on the development of effective RSV maternal and infant immunization strategies, and deep engagement with WHO, Gavi, and other global bodies to enable global and regional policy decisions supporting the timely introduction of efficacious RSV prevention products in LMICs.
Prior to joining the foundation, Padmini was with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a Senior Medical Epidemiologist, and led CDC’s AMR platform in India, encompassing efforts to strengthen AMR surveillance and reduce key healthcare associated infections, and also served as the CDC-India lead for infectious disease surveillance. Prior to that, Padmini served as medical officer for HIV treatment in the WHO South East Asia Regional Office where she led the HIV Drug Resistance Surveillance and Prevention program and provided extensive technical assistance on antiretroviral therapy scale-up and evaluation in numerous countries in Asia. She is board certified in infectious diseases from the University of California, San Francisco, served in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at CDC in the Foodborne & Diarrheal Diseases Branch, and received an MPH in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
2 - Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Vaccines to Reduce Antimicrobial Resistance
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
1:30 PM – 3:15 PM US ET
5 - The Potential of Viral Vaccines to Help Reduce Antimicrobial Resistance
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
2:05 PM – 2:40 PM US ET