Yamikani Rose Chimwaza

Yamikani is a maternal health clinician–scientist and implementation researcher based in Malawi, with over a decade of experience strengthening antenatal and emergency obstetric care in sub-Saharan Africa. She holds a PhD in Women’s Health (Global Maternal Health) and is a leading researcher in maternal sepsis diagnosis, focusing on early warning systems for obstetrics, prognostic blood biomarkers, and diagnostic accuracy in low-resource settings.

Her doctoral work evaluated early warning scores across multi-country datasets. It assessed the performance of biomarkers, including procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6), in Malawian maternal populations, advancing pregnancy-specific thresholds and combined clinical–biomarker algorithms for early risk identification.

Yamikani is a member of the World Health Organization Maternal and Perinatal Health Technical Advisory Group and leads multi-country implementation research to integrate diagnostic tools into routine antenatal and intrapartum care. Through collaborative regional partnerships, she advances evidence-informed clinical pathways, diagnostic use cases, and health system strategies to improve timely, respectful, and high-quality maternal care in resource-constrained settings.