Seynabou Gaye

Seynabou Gaye is a senior malaria specialist at RTI providing technical direction to the USAID Owod project in Senegal. She has 16 years of public health leadership experience in Senegal at the central and operational levels. As part of USAID Owod, she leads training and drug-based malaria prevention strategies in collaboration with Senegal's National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). Her work involves overseeing the implementation of an integrated package and scale-up of proven malaria interventions, particularly among vulnerable groups, including pregnant women and children under 5. Dr. Gaye also provides technical support for and supervises seasonal malaria chemoprevention interventions, as well as activities aimed at improving access to quality rapid diagnostic tests and artemisinin-based combination therapies at the facility and community level. 

Before joining RTI in 2022, Dr. Gaye worked with Senegal's NMCP as the lead for training, case management and drug-based prevention strategies and as a community case management manager. In these roles, she helped develop and implement Senegal's national Prise En Charge à Domicile (PECADOM) home-based management guidelines, trained community health workers, and coordinated proactive malaria interventions across the country, including in thousands of remote villages. She also served as a guest lecturer at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, where she taught doctors and nurses about malaria monitoring and evaluation and community interventions.

Dr. Gaye has six years of clinical experience as an infectious disease physician and served as the district medical officer of the Niakhar Health District in Senegal's Fatick Region, where she was the sole physician in the district of 80,000 people. She planned and organized the implementation of all health activities in the district and managed all human, financial and material resources, including all medications and other essential products.

She was selected by staff at the U.S. Embassy in Senegal to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program for emerging foreign leaders. The program focused on HIV, infectious diseases, and public health.