Professor McAdam is Associate International Director for Africa at the Royal College of Physicians. He retired in 2007 after four years as Professor of Medicine and founding Director of the Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. He is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a position he held from 1985-2004. For eight years he was seconded to West Africa (1994-2003) to be Director of the Medical Research Council (UK) Laboratories in The Gambia.
Keith McAdam grew up in Uganda and went on to study medicine at Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital in London. After training in Internal Medicine in London, he spent 3 years at the Institute of Medical Research in Papua New Guinea working on leprosy, malaria and filariasis; two years (1975-77) at the Immunology Branch of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda developed his laboratory and clinical research focus on inflammation, cytokines, acute phase proteins and amyloidosis. This continued over the next 7 years in Boston as a clinical scientist in the Department of Medicine at Tufts New England Medical Centre, from which he was recruited to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and its associated clinical base at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
Keith has been visiting professor at several universities and has served on various Charity and research funding Boards. He is Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical School in Boston and at University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. He was Medical Advisor to the UK Parliamentary Select Committee on AIDS in 1987 and a member of the 2003 Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party on ‘The ethics of healthcare related research in developing countries’. In 2006, HE President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni presented him with an Award for Distinguished Service to the People of Uganda.
Appointed to the AMREF Board in October 2010.
