Public Health: Chiedza Machingaidze

Where do you currently work and what is your role?

I currently work at World Health Organisation (WHO), currently based at the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) in Brazzaville, as a data analyst.

What does your role entail?

My role entails supporting WHO country offices and Member States in improving data collection, management and analysis to strengthen response during health emergencies. Every day is different as I maintain and report on routine data analyses but also contribute to the different emergency responses as they occur.

What are some of your professional highlights since graduating?

This is a hard one as I have so many! I thrive when I’m learning, and I am constantly doing this in my job. If I had to choose, I’d say contributing to work in increasing accessibility to Rabies post-exposure prophylaxis in Cambodia, supporting the Ebola outbreak response in Sierra Leone and the work we’re currently doing in AFRO to produce disease-specific outbreak data toolkits.

What are some highlights from your life as a student at the University of Melbourne?

My highlights are mainly from the skill-based subjects that I did such as linear and logistic regression, survival analysis, epidemiology of epidemics, health program evaluation, health economic evaluation. I enjoyed learning practical skills or different ways of thinking that have all been very useful in my current job.

I also really appreciated the openness of faculty staff. They were always most willing to assist whether it was regarding course content, work references or general career advice. I’ve even kept in touch with someone of them, who really have become more like friends.