David Lewis is currently the Director of Western Sydney Sexual Health Centre and conjoint Professor at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Throughout his career, David has had a special interest in the clinical, microbiological and public health aspects of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV.
David graduated as a medical doctor from the London Hospital Medical College, London University in 1987. Following senior house officer positions in general medicine, haematological oncology, infectious diseases, genitourinary and HIV medicine, David underwent specialist training in both microbiology and genitourinary and HIV medicine.
His PhD focused on the pathogenesis of Haemophilus ducreyi infection and was undertaken jointly at Imperial College London, UK, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Dallas, USA.
On successfully completing his PhD, David went to work as a consultant physician at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Trust. In 2004 he was appointed Head of the STI Reference Centre at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa. He subsequently took on the role of head of the newly created Centre for HIV and STI at the same institution before relocating to Australia in 2014.
David’s major research has focused on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of STI pathogens, primarily on AMR of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from a microbiological, clinical, and public health perspective. He is particularly interested in the important role of key populations, such as men-who-have-sex-with-men and sex workers, in the emergence and subsequent spread of multi-drug resistant gonococci. David’s team was the first to describe the emergence of cefixime-associated gonorrhoea treatment failure in Africa.
David is the author of more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters; a Joint Editor of Sexual Health and a former Deputy Editor of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
David frequently gives strategic support to the World Health Organization on the treatment and control of STIs. He is a former president of the International Union against STIs (IUSTI) and a former elected member of the Executive Board of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Research (ISSTDR).
David received a Gold Medal from the IUSTI (2017) and the Walter Belda Medal from the Brazilian Sexually Transmitted Diseases’ Society (2019) in recognition of his efforts to foster international collaboration in the fight against STIs.