Raffaella Ravinetto ([email protected])

Dr Raffaella Ravinetto holds a Pharmacy Master Degree from the University of Torino and a Postgraduate Diploma in Tropical Medical Biology from the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine.

After a seven-year experience as a Clinical Research Scientist in the private pharmaceutical sector, she worked in humanitarian emergency and development programs in the Balkans and in Africa. In 2002, she joined the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), where she followed various dossiers on access to essential medicines and on quality of medicines, while performing regular field assessments in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

She currently works at the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), as head of the Clinical Trials Unit, which provide methodological and scientific support to ITM researchers and to ITM partner institutions in the South, for designing and conducting non-commercial clinical research projects in the field of malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases. She is the coordinator of the ITM Switching the Poles Clinical Research Network, which aims at developing ethics- and GCP-compliant approaches to medical research carried out in research-limited contexts and vulnerable communities; and the co-promoter of Quamed, a North-South Network promoting evidence-based strategies for universal access to quality-ensured medicines. She was president of the Italian branch of MSF (2007-2011). She is currently a member of MSF Ethics Review Board.

Her main areas of interest include North-South collaborative clinical research, research ethics (particularly in relation to resource-constrained settings) and access to health.