Ayesha Verrall

Verrall was born in Invercargill to Lathee and Bill and raised in Te Anau. Her mother, who grew up in the Maldives, was the first person in the country to pass Cambridge examinations in English and study in New Zealand on a scholarship.[1][2] Verrall is named after her grandmother who died when Lathee was two years old.[3]

Verrall trained in medicine at the University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine, where she obtained her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) in 2004.[4] She was president of the Otago University Students' Association in 2001[1] where she lobbied for interest-free student loans[2] and in 2003 also led the formation of the New Zealand Medical Student Journal (NSMJ).[5]

During the next decade, Verrall trained in tropical medicine, bioethics and international health in the United Kingdom, Singapore and Peru.[6] Verrall earned an MSc from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the University of Alabama through the Gorgas Institute in Lima, Peru.[7][8]

In 2018, Verrall completed her PhD in tuberculosis epidemiology at the University of Otago, in collaboration with Padjadjaran University in Indonesia and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Her research investigated the early clearance immune response to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection among Indonesian people who were highly exposed to the bacteria, yet remained uninfected.[7][9] She developed the Innate Factors in Early Clearance of M. tuberculosis (INFECT) cohort as part of her dissertation.[10]

Before entering national politics, Verrall was a senior lecturer at University of Otago in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine. She taught microbiology to medical students and researched tuberculosis epidemiology, immunology and host-pathogen interactions.[7]

Verrall was also an infectious diseases physician at the Capital and Coast District Health Board in Wellington and became an elected member of its board in the 2019 local elections. She stood representing the Labour Party and was appointed by the Minister of Health, David Clark, as deputy board chair. She also provided advice to the government on vaccines, outbreaks and disease prevention.[11] During the 2019–2020 New Zealand measles outbreak, she advocated for a more strategic approach to allocating more government funding and resources towards increasing vaccination rates for measles, as well as preventing future outbreaks.[12]

In March 2020, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Verrall called for the New Zealand Government to urgently improve their data on community spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 through expanding the testing criteria beyond sick people, increasing laboratory testing and contact tracing capabilities.[13] At the time, the Ministry of Health was tracing the contacts of 50 cases per day; Verrall called for up to 1000 people's contacts to be traced every day by increasing the number of staff in public health units, central call centres and investing in technology that could make the contact tracing process instantaneous.[14]

Subsequently, Verrall was commissioned by the ministry to provide an independent audit of its contact tracing programme.[15] The report was initially submitted to the ministry in early April and made publicly available on 20 April to allow the government time to respond and implement some of the recommendations.[16][17] Verrall's audit identified shortcomings in the health sector's approach, which she concluded was "understaffed and lacked cohesion"[18] and could only trace up to 185 cases.[3] The country's 12 "devolved" public health units made it difficult to coordinate data systems nationally and slowed down the process of contacting people. The ministry had developed a national automated system for contact tracing which had yet to be rolled out at the time of Verrall's audit.[19] Verrall cautioned that although the quality of the contact tracing was good, its scalability remained an issue.[19] The ministry accepted Verrall's recommendations and began implementing them, as well as improving and implementing its nationwide automated contact tracing system, as the country moved to a less-strict lockdown measure on 28 April.[17][20] In June 2020, Verrall was invited by the World Health Organization to share her audit report as an example of best practice.[21][22]

Verrall has one daughter.[3]

• Verrall, Ayesha J.; Alisjahbana, Bachti; Apriani, Lika; Novianty, Novianty; Nurani, Andini C.; van Laarhoven, Arjan; Ussher, James E.; Indrati, Agnes; Ruslami, Rovina; Netea, Mihai G.; Sharples, Katrina (28 March 2020). "Early clearance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: the INFECT case contact cohort study in Indonesia". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 221 (8): 1351–1360. doi:10.1093/infdis/jiz168. ISSN 0022-1899. PMID 31298280.
• Verrall, Ayesha J; Chaidir, Lidya; Ruesen, Carolien; Apriani, Lika; Koesoemadinata, Raspati C; van Ingen, Jakko; Sharples, Katrina; van Crevel, Reinout; Alisjahbana, Bachti; Hill, Philip C; on behalf of the INFECT study group (8 January 2020). "Lower BCG protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection after exposure to Beijing strains". American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 201 (9): rccm.201912–2349LE. doi:10.1164/rccm.201912-2349LE. ISSN 1073-449X. PMID 31914319.
• Koeken, Valerie A. C. M.; Verrall, Ayesha J.; Ardiansyah, Edwin; Apriani, Lika; dos Santos, Jéssica C.; Kumar, Vinod; Alisjahbana, Bachti; Hill, Philip C.; Joosten, Leo A. B.; van Crevel, Reinout; van Laarhoven, Arjan (2020). "IL-32 and its splice variants are associated with protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and skewing of Th1/Th17 cytokines". Journal of Leukocyte Biology. 107 (1): 113–118. doi:10.1002/JLB.4AB0219-071R. ISSN 1938-3673. PMC 6972663. PMID 31378983.
• Steigler, Pia; Verrall, Ayesha J.; Kirman, Joanna R. (2019). "Beyond memory T cells: mechanisms of protective immunity to tuberculosis infection". Immunology & Cell Biology. 97 (7): 647–655. doi:10.1111/imcb.12278. ISSN 1440-1711. PMID 31141205.