Shamez comments:
"I am very excited to be appointed as the Chair of the BPSU and I look forward to working with the BPSU team to build on the excellent work of Dr Richard Reading over the past five years."
Shamez is a paediatric infectious diseases consultant at St George’s Hospital, senior lecturer at St George’s University of London and consultant epidemiologist at Public Health England. He is the clinical lead for a number of national vaccine preventable infections, including Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitis, which are all major causes of childhood bacterial meningitis.
He was the winner of the Sir Peter Tizard Bursary in 2004-05 on imported childhood malaria in the UK, has been instrumental in BPSU studies on acute hepatitis and enterovirus and parechovirus meningitis and is supervising the Tizard Bursary 2017-18 winner, Dr Godwin Oligbu with his study on ‘Characteristics of Children with Pneumococcal Meningitis’.
Shamez completed his medical training at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospitals, London, and then worked in a children’s hospital in rural Kenya. Upon returning to London, he obtained his PhD in genetic epidemiology and vaccine failure in children and completed his specialist paediatric infectious diseases training at St George’s and Great Ormond Street Hospitals, London.
He is currently responsible for the national evaluation of the meningococcal group B vaccine, Bexsero®, in the national infant immunisation programme and the meningococcal ACWY conjugate vaccination programme for teenagers. His main research interests include vaccine-preventable infectious diseases and he has published extensively in these fields.