About Us

African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET): Dr Simon Nyovuura Antara

Dr. Simon Nyovuura Antara is a medical epidemiologist with vast experience in public health practice and applied epidemiology. He is the Acting Executive Director of the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET). Before his current appointment, he served as the Director of Programs of AFENET. Dr. Antara has worked as Resident Advisor to a number of Field Epidemiology Training Programs in different countries in Africa. These include the Rwanda Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP), Namibia FELTP and the West Africa FELTP- a regional program based in Ouagadougou for the francophone West African Countries. Dr Antara has also previously worked as a Municipal Director of Health Service in Ghana and was a key member of the National Rapid Response Team.
 

Dr Antara has leadership skills and expertise in program and project management, monitoring and evaluation, surveillance, emergency preparedness & response, infectious diseases, training, mentorship, networking & collaboration. He is very focused and committed to his work and has won many awards as a student and in his work life. These include the US Ambassador’s award for exceptional dedication and technical excellence in supporting Namibia to respond to critical public health threats (2013), the University of Ghana School of public Health award for best dissertation and best field practice student (2004), The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Medicine award for best student in Medicine and Clinical Methods (2000).

Dr Antara is a member of the Ghana Medical Association and the International Epidemiological Association. He is also a member of the AFENET Board of Directors.

Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC): Dr Yanping Zhang

Dr Yanping Zhang is the deputy director of the public health emergency center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC).He graduated as MD on public health from Shandong Medical University in 1987 and graduated as MPH from China CDC in 2007, and was also graduated from the Chinese Field Epidemiology Training Program in 2004.

Dr Yanping Zhang worked in Henan Provincial CDC after graduation from the university for 20 years, His main work duty is prevention and control of zoonoses such as Japanese encephalitis, Leptospirosis, Rabies, Brucellosis, HFRS, Plague and so on. Since 2007, he worked at China CDC, his main research area is emerging and reemerging infectious diseases control and prevention. He attended emergency events response including severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome(SFTS),pandemic influenza A(H1N1), H7N9 and other human infected avian influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Zika virus disease, Corona Virus Disease 2019 and Unknown etiology diseases. As a deputy director of the public health emergency center of China CDC, he is now mainly coordinating the surveillance, risk assessment, emergency preparedness and response of emerging infectious disease and pandemic preparedness. He also coordinated the establishment and management of emergency response teams and logistics support. 

Dr.Yanping Zhang is the focal point for the emergency medical teams (EMT) in China.

Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network (EMPHNET): Dr Mohannad Al- Nsour

Dr. Mohannad Al-Nsour is an internationally recognized expert in field epidemiology, research and public health systems. Dr. Al-Nsour assumed several positions as a researcher, advisor, and director in Jordan. He also served as a consultant on several assignments with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the American University of Beirut.

Dr. Al-Nsour has been leading EMPHNET since 2009, by providing strategic and operational responsibilities, and guiding the enrichment of FETPs and public health in the region. Under Dr. Al-Nsour’s leadership, EMPHNET emerged as a regional entity that leads initiatives to promote public health, advance field epidemiology and improve performance of FETPs in the region. Dr. Al-Nsour is a speaker at the national and regional level covering public health topics such as leadership, field epidemiology, and creating new opportunities. As a certified trainer, Dr. Al-Nsour has extensive experience in training both at the national and regional levels, with outstanding teaching skills. His areas of expertise are infectious diseases, non-communicable disease and cancer epidemiology.

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC): Mr Thomas Hoffmann

Mr. Thomas Hofmann is heading the Section “Emergency Preparedness and Response” in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm. This Section also hosts the Secretariat for the EU Health Task Force, which supports countries in their national preparedness and response work.

Before he joined the Centre in 2021, he was working for WHO and the WHO Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) in various offices and functions. Besides directly supporting low- and middle-income countries with capacity building and during response operations, he was coordinating the implementation and application of the International Health Regulations (IHR) in the WHO European Region and supporting IHR Review and Emergency Committees at WHO Headquarters. Mr. Hofmann was involved in several outbreak and crisis responses, on the national level by mobilizing support, e.g. during his earlier employment with the German Federal Ministry of Health, on the international level by coordinating support, and on the field level while being deployed, e.g. in Liberia during the EVD outbreak.

International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (icddr,b): Dr Lubaba Shahrin

Dr. Lubaba Shahrin, MBBS, FCPS, is a Pediatrician of the Dhaka Hospital of the icddr,b, and lead of Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) ward. Dr Shahrin joined as  a Clinical Fellow in 2006 and is currently holding the Associate Scientist position. Dr. Shahrin’s professional career focused on emerging infectious diseases, diarrhoeal illnesses, malnutrition, child TB, Sepsis, and acute respiratory infections. She has experience in the clinical care of PLHIV from 2009-2015. In 2014, she was awarded an HIV/ID clinical observership program in New York-Presbyterian Hospital- Weill Cornell Medical College, USA.

She has conducted Train the trainers (TOT) programs in case management of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) in many national crisis preparedness workshops in Barisal, Cox’s bazaar Rohingya refugee camp to name a few. In 2017, she was deployed to Ethiopia for three weeks. Funded by Global Affairs of Canada (GAC) to conduct nationwide training for IPC and Case Management for COVID-19, Dr. Shahrin and her team efficaciously trained over 750 healthcare workers in the past year. Currently, she is working as a Child TB trainer for USAID’s Alliance for Combating TB in Bangladesh (ACTB).

Over her research career, she has authored 30+ journal publications and 10+ conference proceedings, including clinical trials on severe pneumonia. Dr. Shahrin is a member of the Bangladesh Pediatric Association, elected as a young member of Commonwealth Association of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (CAPGAN), European Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID), and American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH).

Institute Pasteur, Senegal: Dr Amadou Sall

Amadou A Sall is a virologist and has a PhD in Public health. He received his scientific education at Universities Paul Sabatier at Toulouse, Paris Orsay and Pierre et Marie Curie in France. He has also visited several laboratories for his training including Institut Pasteur in Paris (France), Institute of Virology and environmental medicine in Oxford (United Kingdom), Center for tropical disease at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (USA) or Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University at New York.

He is currently the head of the Arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fever unit, director of the WHO collaborating center and scientific Director of Institut Pasteur de Dakar which belongs to the Institut Pasteur International Network. His research focused primarily on ecology and evolution of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fever and diagnostics of the latter viruses is a priority in his laboratory. Dr Sall has worked for 2 years in Cambodia (2002-2004) on hepatitis B and C viruses. He was a Visiting Research Scientist at the Center for Infection and immunity at the Mailman School of Public health at Columbia University of New york and worked for a year on pathogen discovery. He has published more than 100 papers and book chapters and gave more than 100 scientific communications in international meeting.

He is consultant and member of expert committees for WHO (GOARN, TDR…), OIE and member of GOARN steering committee. Dr Sall is the director and founder of the international course on “arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fever diagnosis, prevention, control and outbreak management” organized by Institut Pasteur Dakar in partnership AMP, Ministry of health of Senegal and University Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar. He has taught at the University Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, University of Columbia at New York and Institut Pasteur in Paris. Dr Sall has been recipient of the Senegal presidential award for Science in 2011 and is a member of the Senegal National Academy of Science and Technology.

Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas J.MAIZTEGUI (INEVH): Dr Alejandra Morales

Since 2004, Dr Morales is working at the Argentina WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center in Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers and Arboviruses (INEVH) focusing on developing and structuring a national network of 65 provincial laboratories for integrated laboratory surveillance of arboviruses in Argentina. In 2014, she became the head of the Virology and Immunology Division of the Research Department at INEVH. In 2018, she took over as Director of the Collaborating Center activities.  In the last two decades, the centre has successfully detected the emergence and re-emergence in Argentina of the four serotypes of Dengue virus, Saint Louis encephalitis virus, West Nile virus, Yellow Fever virus, Chikungunya and Zika.

Dr Morales is a trained biochemist from University of La Plata and received her specialization in  biochemistry from College of Biochemists, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: Mr Panu Saaristo

Mr Panu SAARISTO is the Team Leader for the Emergency Health Unit at the Geneva headquarters of IFRC. In that role, he leads a team of experts developing, implementing and quality assuring health emergency risk management and humanitarian health action in the world’s largest humanitarian network, spanning the spectrum from public health preparedness to emergency medical response and recovery. Mr Saaristo joined the IFRC in 2006 and has had various assignments for emergency health action in the field and at the headquarters.

International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC): Dr Gail Carson

Dr Gail Carson qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in 1994. After obtaining her MRCP she studied the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at Liverpool. She completed her specialty training in Manchester and took up a Consultants post with the Health Protection Agency at Porton Down. Additionally, she carried out clinical work at Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

During her infectious diseases training she had opportunities to work with the WHO on viral haemorrhagic fevers, SARS and H5N1. This interest in emerging pathogen outbreaks has continued and is the reason why she took up the post with the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium – ISARIC (www.isaric.org) in 2012. ISARIC is a network of clinical research networks working with the other disciplines such as public health to prepare and roll out an integrated outbreak research response to help improve the knowledge base to inform patient care and policy.

Medecins Sans Frontiers, International: Dr Daniela Garone

Dr Daniela Garone is a Medical doctor from Argentina,  with more than 25 years working in the clinical field and 13 years of experience managing medical programs in resource limited settings (Zimbabwe, Mozambique, India, Venezuela, Brazil, Malawi, South Sudan and South Africa). She has more than 20 years of experience working in clinical, pharmacological and operational research as study coordinator as well as principal investigator. She has also always sought to integrate operational research into the clinical service delivery elements of her work in resource-limited settings to further extend the impact and efficiency of health services.

Since January 2018, she is a serving HIV-TB Expert member in the Technical Review Panel (TRP) at The Global Fund.

Dr Garone is always looking for acquiring the necessary skills and qualification to perform her best in her responsibility toward high quality outcomes that can improve patients health and well-being.

National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), South Africa: Dr Janusz Paweska

Professor Janusz T. Paweska is a head of the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service (NICD-NHLS), Sandringham, South Africa. He is also the head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers and Arboviruses, regional director of the Global Virus Network and the deputy director of the Southern Center for Infectious Diseases Surveillance. His special fields lie in viral diagnostics with focus on the development and validation of novel techniques for rapid pathogen detection and discovery, epidemiology and ecology of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers, virus-host interactions, high and maximum biocontainment management. He published 137 articles in peer reviewed journals and 12 book chapters.

Prof. Paweska has been a part of international research expeditions and outbreak responses, including the 2002 Ebola outbreaks in Gabon, the 2005 Marburg disease outbreak in Angola, the 2006 Rift Valley fever outbreak in Kenya, the 2009 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Ebola ecology study in 2010, 2011 in the DRC. During a highly fatal nosocomial outbreak in Johannesburg in 2008 he led the discovery of a new Old World Arenavirus, he named Lujo virus. In 2014 he established Ebola diagnostic mobile laboratory in Sierra Leone as a part of WHO-GOARN Ebola outbreak response in West Africa in 2014-2015.

Prof. Paweska is a member of the Bioweapon Working Committee of the South African Council for Non-Proliferation, SA Ministry of Health Advisory Committee on Ebola, the WHO Global Outbreak & Alert Response Network, the WHO Emerging and Dangerous Pathogens Laboratory Network, WHO Technical Group for orthopoxvirus/smallpox virus laboratory diagnostics, and the International Committee for Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) Filoviridae Study Group.

National University of Singapore (NUS): Dr Dale Fisher

Dr Fisher is an Australian born, infectious disease physician expert in clinical management and infection control. He is currently a professor at National University of Singapore and senior consultant at National University Hospital and at Ministry of Health Singapore.

Dr Fisher has served as a member of the GOARN steering committee since 2013. He has been involved in GOARN through outbreak response leadership trainings, regional network meetings and outbreak missions to Malaysia, Mongolia and Liberia. He has received a Courage foundation award for work during SARS in Singapore as well as many other awards for clinical leadership and excellence. He is widely published in the international peer reviewed literature (>130) and a frequent speaker (>100) in international forums on infectious disease management, infection control and outbreak response.

PathWest: Dr Paul Effler

Dr Paul Effler received a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of California and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Hawaii. After completing a residency in Public Health and Preventive Medicine, he served as an Officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the CDC and as a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa and the World Health Organization. For more than a decade he served as the State Epidemiologist for Hawaii where he oversaw disease surveillance activities and directed the public health response to outbreaks of SARS, measles, dengue fever, murine typhus, hepatitis A, and Escherichia coli O157.

In 2008 he moved to Western Australia where he served as the State Human Epidemic Controller during the 2009 influenza pandemic; he currently manages the State’s immunization program and treats patients at a sexual health clinic. In 2009 Dr. Effler assisted in the response to an outbreak of leptospirosis in the Philippines as a GOARN volunteer. Following this experience, he became an active member of the GOARN training team, contributing to multiple trainings for potential GOARN outbreak responders. Dr. Effler also volunteered with GOARN as a Sub-National Technical Coordinator for the Ebola response in West Africa in 2014.

Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC): Ms. Laurie Hunter

Ms. Hunter is the Director General for Emergency Preparedness at PHAC.  She is an experienced senior manager in the Canada Public Service with 25 years experience in a range of policy and program areas including immigration, trade, and foreign direct investment as well as overseeing key corporate initiatives in change management, training and leadership.  She is currently responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs that prepare Canada to respond quickly and efficiently to public health emergencies. In this capacity, Ms. Hunter is responsible for managing threats to public health as identified through risk assessment; the monitoring of public health intelligence reporting; and, the operations of Canada’s Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN).

Ms. Hunter supports public health emergency preparedness through oversight of emergency plans development for the federal health portfolio in Canada, as well as various exercises to test those plans. She contributes to international public health structures as the lead executive responsible for Canada’s implementation of the International Health Regulations. She also provides leadership for public health emergency responses by administering the Canadian Public Health Service and the Canadian Field Epidemiology Program, which trains and provides field placements to medical professionals within Canada.

UK Health Security Agency (formerly PHE) Dr. Benedict Gannon

Ben has career long experience in zoonotic disease research and diagnostics for epidemic agents spanning both academia and public health institutes.
He is the Director of the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) which is funded by UK Aid from the Department of Health and Social Care and is jointly run by UKHSA and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This team of multi-disciplinary experts respond rapidly to outbreaks in low and middle income countries providing expert technical support. This operational element is integrated with a programme of operational outbreak research and capacity development projects to provide immediate support to epidemics and importantly to strengthen response capacity and effectiveness for outbreak responses in the future.

A microbiologist by training, he began his career developing and providing diagnostics for viral haemorrhagic fevers and arboviral infections before entering academia where he specialised in zoonotic disease diagnostics, transmission and treatment at the University of Bristol. Working for Public Health England he deployed on multiple occasions to run UK laboratories during the West African Ebola outbreak (2014-16) before joining the UK-PHRST where he has built an extensive experience base and portfolio of work, leading deployments, research projects and capacity development programmes for outbreak response in Africa.

Robert Koch Institute: Dr Andreas Jansen

Dr. Jansen is currently working for the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin as the Head of the Information Center for International Health Protection (INIG). He is a trained MD with a postgraduate degree in field epidemiology (EPIET), a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine, and a board certification in epidemiology.

From 2016-18, he worked at WHO at Headquarters in Geneva. As part of the GOARN operation support team, his main task was to coordinate the work on Rapid Response Capacities. From 2010-2015, he was employed as Head of Section for Scientific Advice Coordination at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm. He was responsible for developing and implementing SOPs and workflows for scientific advice at ECDC, including their IT implementation. Other responsibilities included country assessment missions, evaluation of public health measures, and producing guidelines and recommendations based on the available evidence.

In 2015, he was employed as a senior consultant at the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office in Manila, as part of the response team for the MERS outbreak. In addition, he was member of several public health emergency response teams (pandemic influenza, Q fever, EHEC) both on national and international level. He has extensive working experience in outbreak response, and was the principal investigator in several outbreak investigations.

Tulane School Of Public Health: Dr Lina Moses

Dr. Lina Moses is an assistant professor at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, USA. Her research and practice focuses on community-engaged and One Health approaches to disease surveillance and zoonotic disease prevention and control. She completed an interdisciplinary PhD in 2012 from Tulane University in tropical medicine, community health, and environmental health. Her dissertation work focused on Lassa fever and the rodent-human interface in rural Sierra Leone. She continued to work on Lassa fever, overseeing community-based research initiatives for Tulane’s Sierra Leone-based Lassa Fever Programme and Lassa fever surveillance with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation until 2015.

Dr. Moses trained and supervised surveillance teams and coordinated response in Kenema during the West African Ebola epidemic throughout 2014 and currently serves as program advisor for the Ebola Survivor Corps. She continues to work with Njala University to build its public health workforce and research capacity. She is the Tulane Focal Point for GOARN and currently serves as chair of the GOARN One Health Research Working Group.

United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF): Dr Carlos Navarro Colorado

Dr. Carlos Navarro Colorado is UNICEF’s Principal Adviser, Public Health Emergencies, leading UNICEF’s global work in preparedness and response to outbreaks and other public health emergencies across sectors, including WASH, Health, Risk Communication, Psychosocial support and others.

During more than 25 years in the humanitarian health sector, Dr. Carlos Navarro Colorado has played many leadership roles in outbreak preparedness and response, from field positions with Doctors Without Borders and Action Against Hunger, to advisory role and consultant and for 7 years at the US – Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emergency Response and Recovery Branch, Center for Global Health.

Dr. Navarro Colorado is a physician (Alicante University, 1993), and specialized in Tropical Medicine (Autonomous University of Barcelona, 1994). He obtained a Masters in Epidemiology from LSHTM (1998) and a PhD in Medicine and Therapeutics from Aberdeen University (2005).

Dr. Navarro Colorado has deployed through GOARN to a leadership role as Incident Manager of the Yellow Fever response in Angola in 2016 and has participated in the response to numerous health emergencies and disease outbreaks including cholera, dysentery, measles, relapsing fever, hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola virus disease), Zika and others. He has also lead large teams of responders for several humanitarian organizations during protracted emergencies, natural disasters and refugee crisis, including in Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Angola, Haiti, and others.

United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC): Dr Ray Arthur

Dr. Arthur is currently the Director of the Global Disease Detection Operations Center in the Division of Global Health Protection, Center for Global Health, at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA.

He received his PhD in virology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and then joined the faculty in what is currently the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. While at Hopkins, he worked both in Baltimore (1985-1992) and in Cairo, Egypt (1992-1997) as the Head of the Virology Branch at the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 where he directed research programs on arboviruses and viral hepatitis.

Dr. Arthur joined CDC in 1997 as the Advisor for Emerging Diseases in the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and was assigned to the Department of Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva with technical responsibility for surveillance and control of hemorrhagic fever virus, arbovirus, and orthopoxvirus infections. In this assignment, he actively participated in WHO’s epidemic intelligence and response activities and coordinated field operations of WHO and international teams during outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Rift Valley fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and other diseases. He was one of the architects of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) founded in 2000.

In 2003, he moved to CDC headquarters in Atlanta as the Associate Director for Global Health in NCID and led CDC’s International Emerging Infections Programs (IEIP). In addition to his IEIP responsibilities, he served as a liaison with public health authorities in other countries and with international organizations in establishing collaborative programs for preventing and controlling emerging infectious diseases. He has coordinated Atlanta-based CDC responses to SARS in 2003, to the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, to the 2005 Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola, and in 2005 led a multidisciplinary 20-person team that assisted the San Antonio Metropolitan Health Department in providing public health services to Hurricane Katrina evacuees. In 2010, he served as the PAHO/WHO liaison for CDC’s response to cholera in Haiti and more recently led the International Task Force for the CDC response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

The CDC Global Disease Detection Operations Center (GDDOC) that Dr. Arthur established in 2006 and currently directs, leverages CDC program expertise and formal and informal networks, including those of other CDC partners, to provide CDC staff with a single-source of reliable, comprehensive, and high quality information on international disease outbreaks and other health threats. The GDDOC systematically collects and analyzes international health event information for early detection, classifies the health risks associated with these events, disseminates reports, and facilitates appropriate and rapid interventions. Dr. Arthur is currently the Chair-elect of GOARN and has served as Chair of the Biosurveillance Indications and Warning Analytic Community (BIWAC), a USG interagency forum for timely collaborative exchange of critical information regarding indications and warning of biological events that may threaten US national interests.

A member of several professional scientific societies, Dr. Arthur is the author of more than 70 scientific publications, book chapters and reviews.

University of Nebraska: Dr Ali Khan

Dr Ali S. Khan, MD, MPH, MBA, is Dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and a former Assistant Surgeon General with the US Public Health Service. Dr. Khan’s professional career has focused on health security, global health, and emerging infectious diseases. He completed a 23-year career as a senior director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which he joined as a disease detective, and where he led and responded to numerous high profile domestic and international public health emergencies. Dr. Khan was one of the main architects of CDC’s national health security program and continues this work at UNMC, which has been nationally-designated to prepare the American healthcare system to respond to outbreaks of high hazard pathogens. He also continues to actively support global outbreak responses such as the response for the West Africa Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh as a member of World Health Organization (WHO) Global Outbreak And Response Network.

As Dean of the UNMC College of Public Health, his focus is on health system and community based health transformations. His vision is for the College to play an integral role in creating the next generation of Public Health Guardians and devising innovative solutions and new interventions to address public health challenges. The College is committed to education with a purpose measured by the impact in our communities starting with making Nebraska the healthiest and most equitable state in the Union as a national and global model for wellness.

Dr. Khan received his medical degree from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and has a Master of Public Health from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. He completed his pediatrics and internal medicine training at the University of Michigan. He has authored numerous papers and publications and has consulted extensively for multiple US organizations, ministries of health, and the World Health Organization where he serves on the steering committee for GOARN. Dr. Khan is the author of The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind’s Gravest Dangers.

World Health Organization: Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall

Doctor Ibrahima Socé Fall is the WHO Assistant Director General for emergencies response. He is and internationally know epidemiologist and global health scholar. His areas of expertise include Communicable diseases epidemiology, tropical medicine, immunization, Global health security, outbreaks and humanitarian response and health policy. He was formally the Regional Emergencies Director for WHO in the African Region and WHO Representative in Mali in the midst of the political and humanitarian crisis.  He largely contributed the reform of WHO’s work in emergencies following his contribution to ending Ebola in West Africa.

Dr. Fall also served as a member of the expert’s group that led the introduction and implementation of the Roll Back Malaria global partnership which was launched in 1998 by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank.  Dr. Fall was trained as a military physician with over 30 years’ experience in medical practice and Public Health. He has earned a doctorate in medicine (Dr Med), a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from Dakar University (UCAD) and a doctorate in Public Health (PhD) jointly from Tulane University, Payson Center for International Development in the USA and UCAD, a Master of Science (MSc) in Development studies from Tulane University and a post-graduate diploma in tropical medicine and epidemiology in France at Aix-Marseille University and the Institute of Tropical Medicine of the French Army (IMTSSA Pharo). Dr. Fall is also a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK (FFPH).