Koert Ritmeijer is a medical and public health scientist, and has been working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 1989. He currently works as the NTD technical adviser and Research Coordinator at the MSF Operational Centre Amsterdam (MSF-OCA), and is inter-MSF lead on neglected tropical diseases.

He has an MSc in Nutrition and Health from Wageningen University, a MPH in International Public Health from KIT-Amsterdam, and completed a PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of Amsterdam – which included field studies on control of visceral leishmaniasis in East Africa - in 2006.

Since the mid-1990s, he has been coordinating, and providing technical support to the MSF-OCA Leishmaniasis Programmes in East Africa and South Asia. This has included response to several large VL epidemics, often in extremely resource-poor and war-affected situations.

Koert has led on a number of operational and clinical field research projects with the aim of improving diagnosis, treatment, and control of Leishmaniasis (VL and CL) under resource-limited field conditions. A special research project focus is on improving survival outcomes of HIV co-infected VL patients in East Africa.

In 2010 he was awarded the Eijkman Medal, the Netherlands award for tropical medicine research.