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GARDr Manica Balasegaram — no licensed photograph is available, so the sector leader plate is shown instead.

Sector leader

Dr Manica Balasegaram

Executive Director, Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP)

Press citations

1

Topic

1

Hospital discharge / bed-blocking

Last quoted

Aug 2026

Dr Manica Balasegaram: key facts

Kind of voice
Sector leader
Role
Executive Director
Organisation
Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP)
Quoted on
Hospital discharge / bed-blocking
Tracked press citations
1
Most recently quoted
27 Aug 2026

Who Dr Manica Balasegaram is

Dr Manica Balasegaram is Executive Director of the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP), a Swiss not-for-profit organisation that develops and delivers new antibiotic treatments for drug-resistant infections through public-private partnerships. He trained as a medical doctor at the University of Nottingham and began his career in internal and emergency medicine before working as a doctor and researcher across sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). He subsequently served as Head of the Leishmaniasis Clinical Programme at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and then as Executive Director of MSF's Access Campaign before being appointed to lead GARDP in 2016. He has argued publicly that the global antibiotic pipeline is insufficient to keep pace with rising drug-resistant infections and that not-for-profit public-private partnership models are essential to fixing this market failure. He is named on the TIME 100 Health 2026 list for his role in bringing zoliflodacin, the first new single-dose gonorrhoea antibiotic in decades, to FDA approval.

“The report added to evidence that drug-resistant infections had reached a critical tipping point. The most difficult-to-treat gram-negative infections are now beginning to outpace antibiotic development, either because the right antibiotics are not reaching the people who need them, or because they are not being developed in the first place.”

References for this biography

  1. 1.Manica Balasegaram | Executive Director | GARDP — Current role title, career history (University of Nottingham, MSF, DNDi, GARDP from 2016), funding mobilised, governance roles
  2. 2.Dr Manica Balasegaram – WHO biography — UN High Level Panel membership, WHO Scientific Advisory Group membership, overall career narrative
  3. 3.GARDP Executive Director named among TIME's 100 most influential people in health | GARDP — TIME 100 Health 2026 recognition; zoliflodacin FDA approval December 2025; role in gonorrhoea antibiotic development
  4. 4.TIME100 Health: Manica Balasegaram — Independent TIME source confirming FDA approval of zoliflodacin and Balasegaram's leadership role
  5. 5.Contact us – GARDP — Organisational press email and phone number
  6. 6.Manica Balasegaram Authors | Devex — Confirms he is a British medical doctor and executive director of GARDP, based in Geneva

Notable achievements

  • Led GARDP's stewardship of zoliflodacin through a global Phase 3 trial and to FDA approval in December 2025 — the first new antibiotic developed exclusively for gonorrhoea in decades and the first WHO-priority-pathogen trial sponsored and led by a non-profit. Source ↗
  • Named to TIME 100 Most Influential People in Health 2026 for advancing new antibiotic treatments and expanding access to tackle the global AMR crisis. Source ↗
  • Mobilised over €180 million in funding for GARDP and influenced treatment guidelines for malaria, trypanosomiasis, and leishmaniasis across a career spanning more than 20 years in global health. Source ↗
  • Served as a Member of the Expert Advisory Group of the UN High Level Panel on Access to Medicines (2015–16) and a Member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Blueprint on R&D Preparedness. Source ↗

Where Dr Manica Balasegaram has been quoted

  1. Sharp global rise in antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals, WHO findstheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Related media coverage

Recent UK press coverage of their topics — not necessarily citing them directly.

Contact & links

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.

Chief executives, directors and spokespeople of trade bodies, representative associations and charities speaking for the sector. Citations are counted by an automated scan of UK press coverage and may be incomplete. Roles, biographies and contact details are researched and human-reviewed before they appear here; anything not yet reviewed is simply absent rather than shown unverified. This profile was last updated on 5 Oct 2026. See the methodology for how this page is built, or email contact@bridgeheadcommunications.com to correct anything on it.