Chief Operations Officer

Peter John Kenneth Zacharias (DSc, M.G.S.S.A.) has over 25 years experience throughout Africa and other developing countries in higher education with four years in managing Blood Safety projects.  His Key results in Blood Safety Activities, Technical Assistance and Training are:

• Beginning in May 2010 I have spent time learning about Blood Safety, introduced the framework of the Blood Safety Value Chain (BSVC) and written several documents examining the operational effectiveness of the SBFA.  In addition, I have had interactions with several CDC in country leads as well as attended training in Blood Collection, Quality and Appropriate Clinical use of Blood;
• Submitted a contribution to Global Blood Safety Network (Safe Blood for Africa Foundation: promoting the Appropriate Clinical Use of Blood, James D van Hasselt and Pete JK Zacharias, WHO Global Forum for Blood Safety: Patient Blood Management, March 2011;
• Platform paper presented at AfSBT conference June 2012: Appropriate clinical use of blood: targeting training based on major clinical indications for transfusion, van Hasselt JD, Zacharias PJK, Bloch EM;
• Paper presented at AABB conference October 2012: An external quality assurance study of transfusion screening for HIV, HCV and HBV in twelve African countries, Evan M Bloch, Avani Shah, Zhanna Kaidarova, Syria Laperche, Jean-Jacques Lefrere, James van Hasselt, Peter Zacharias and Edward L Murphy for the Anglophone Africa Transfusion Research Group;
• Assisted in the design and facilitation of a study on the quality of testing for TTIs in Anglophone countries resulting in the publication: Bloch EM, ShahA, Kaidarova Z, Laperche S, Lefrere j-j, van Hasselt j, Zacharias P, Murphy EL 2014.  A pilot external quality assurance study of transfusion screening for HIV, HCV and HBsAG in 12 African countries.  Vox Sanguinis, DOI: 10.1111/vox.12182, 10 pp.
• developed several assessments, strategic planning and training templates to improve consistency of in-country Technical Assistance in Blood safety.
• Member of AfSBT’s research and Ethics Committee for southern Africa.

Employment and experience includes: Government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), University of Natal later Kwazulu-Natal, the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation™.  His language proficiency is in English, Afrikaans and some Zulu.