Michaël Boele van Hensbroek has conducted research on various aspects of tropical child health for the past 20 years. His research initially focused on the presentation and treatment of serious malaria in African children, but he subsequently broadened his focus to include research on the aetiology, pathogenesis and prevention of serious anaemia. His anaemia research explores interactions between iron (supplementation), HIV and sensitivity to bacterial and parasitic infections. Research capacity building in Africa represents another important part of Boele van Hensbroek’s work. He was responsible for initiating the highly successful Research Support Centre (RSC) at Malawi University and the RSC network in Southern Africa. 

In addition to continuing the various lines of research and providing education to students and trainee research assistants, he will also work to highlight problems relating to child health in developing countries as part of his teaching and research mandate.

Boele van Hensbroek is a paediatrician-infectiologist at the Emma Children’s Hospital Academic Medical Center (EKZ/AMC) and coordinator of the EKZ/AMC’s Global Child Health Group. He also serves as principal researcher at the AMC and works at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD). He previously worked as a technical consultant for Doctors Without Borders and as a paediatrician at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi and the Royal Victoria Hospital in The Gambia. In 2001, Boele van Hensbroek received a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship from the UK-based Wellcome Trust foundation to conduct research into tropical medicine in Malawi (comparable to a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). He has published extensively in various scientific journals, including the Lancet, AIDS and two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine,. He is a member of various Data and Safety Monitory Board (DSMB) committees for several international research projects and serves as chairman of the UvA’s supervisory committee on clinical placements in developing countries.