Quique Bassat

Quique Bassat

Institut de Salut Global Barcelona

Life & Medical Sciences

Quique Bassat is an ICREA Research Professor at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal). He has a degree in Medicine from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, 1999), a specialization in pediatrics (UaB, 2004), and Masters in Tropical Medicine and International Health (UB, 2004) and Epidemiology (LSHTM, 2008). He obtained his PHD in the year 2009 (UB) with work on the treatment and clinical characterization of malaria in Africa. He has been based for several years at the Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça (CISM), in Mozambique, where he currently conducts most of his research, although in recent years he has started projects in other countries, including Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Brazil or Bhutan.


Research interests

As a paediatrician, my research is based on the premise that there is no greater public health intervention than that which can reduce child mortality, particularly in poor contexts. To do these, I have worked in low and middle-income countries to understand and prevent malaria, pneumonia and other infectious diseases that most impact child survival. I have investigated in Mozambique, Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Brazil and now Bhutan, the epidemiology, aetiology and clinical characteristics of malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, neonatal sepsis, Yaws and other infectious diseases significantly affecting child’s health. I’m interested in biomarkers of host response as diagnostic and prognostic tools to help triage children and better target antibiotics. For malaria and yaws, my research is contributing to develop and test the new paradigm of disease eradication, by assessing the impact of drugs to specifically interrupt their transmission. More recently, my research has focused on improving the poor existing data on the causes of child mortality. An important contribution has been the validation of a radically innovative minimally invasive autopsy (MIA) sampling protocol, currently being implemented in several countries as part of mortality surveillance and research protocols.

Selected publications

– Salzberg NT,  Sivalogan K, Bassat Q & Taylor AW et al. 2019, ‘Mortality Surveillance Methods to Identify and Characterize Deaths in Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network Sites’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 69, S262 – S273.

– Blau DM, Caneer JP, Philipsborn RP, Madhi SA, Bassat Q, Varo R et al. 2019, ‘Overview and Development of the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Determination of Cause of Death (DeCoDe) Process and DeCoDe Diagnosis Standards’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 69, S333 – S341.

– Li Y, Reeves RM, Wang X, Bassat Q et al. 2019, ‘Global patterns in monthly activity of influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus, and metapneumovirus: a systematic analysis’, Lancet Global Health, 7, 8, E1031 – E1045.

– Madrid L, Casellas A, Sacoor C, Quinto L, Sitoe A, Varo R, Acacio S, Nhampossa T, Massora S, Sigauque B, Mandomando I, Cousens S, Menendez C, Alonso P, Macete E & Bassat Q 2019, ‘Postdischarge Mortality Prediction in Sub-Saharan Africa‘, Pediatrics, 143, 1, e20180606.

– Garcia-Basteiro AL et al. 2019, ‘Unmasking the hidden tuberculosis mortality burden in a large post mortem study in Maputo Central Hospital, Mozambique’, European Respiratory Journal, 54, 3, 1900312.