A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example, in meningococcal infections, an attack rate in excess of 15 cases per 100,000 people for two consecutive weeks is considered an epidemic.
Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a program of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The modern EIS is a two-year, hands-on post-doctoral training program in epidemiology, with a focus on field work.
The International Health Regulations (IHR), first adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1969 and last revised in 2005, are legally binding rules that only apply to the WHO that is an instrument that aims for international collaboration "to prevent, protect against, control, and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks and that avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade". The IHR is the only international legal treaty with the responsibility of empowering the World Health Organization (WHO) to act as the main global surveillance system.
A public health emergency of international concern is a formal declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of "an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response", formulated when a situation arises that is "serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected", which "carries implications for public health beyond the affected state's national border" and "may require immediate international action". Under the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), states have a legal duty to respond promptly to a PHEIC. The declaration is publicized by an IHR Emergency Committee (EC) of international experts, which was developed following the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.
Oyewale Tomori is a Nigerian professor of virology, educational administrator, and former vice chancellor of Redeemer's University. In 2024, he became the chair of West Africa National Academy of Scientists.
Stephen C. Redd is a U.S. physician and rear admiral with the U.S. Public Health Service and an Assistant Surgeon General. With over 30 years of public health and executive leadership experience, Redd served as the Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previously, he was the Director of the CDC's Influenza Coordination Unit, where he served as the incident commander for the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic influenza response.
Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic. The WHO adopted the placeholder name to ensure that their planning was sufficiently flexible to adapt to an unknown pathogen. Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci stated that the concept of Disease X would encourage WHO projects to focus their research efforts on entire classes of viruses, instead of just individual strains, thus improving WHO capability to respond to unforeseen strains. In 2020, experts, including some of the WHO's own expert advisors, speculated that COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, met the requirements to be the first Disease X.
The 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak occurred in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from May to July 2018. It was contained entirely within Équateur province, and was the first time that vaccination with the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine had been attempted in the early stages of an Ebola outbreak, with a total of 3,481 people vaccinated. It was the ninth recorded Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
The Kivu Ebola epidemic was an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) mainly in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in other parts of Central Africa, from 2018 to 2020. Between 1 August 2018 and 25 June 2020 it resulted in 3,470 reported cases. The Kivu outbreak also affected Ituri Province, whose first case was confirmed on 13 August 2018. In November 2018, the outbreak became the biggest Ebola outbreak in the DRC's history, and had become the second-largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history worldwide, behind only the 2013–2016 Western Africa epidemic. In June 2019, the virus reached Uganda, having infected a 5-year-old Congolese boy who entered Uganda with his family, but was contained.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe is a Congolese microbiologist. He is the general director of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Institut National pour la Recherche Biomedicale (INRB). He was part of team at the Yambuku Catholic Mission Hospital that investigated the first Ebola outbreak, and was part of the effort that discovered Ebola as a new disease, although his exact role is still subject to controversy. In 2016, he led the research that designed, along with other researchers at the INRB and the National Institute of Health Vaccine Research Center in the US, one of the most promising treatment for Ebola, mAb114. The treatment was successfully experimented during recent outbreaks in the DRC, on the express decision of the then DRC Minister of Health, Dr Oly Ilunga, despite a prior negative advice from the World Health Organization.
Syra Madad is an American pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist. Madad is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the executive leadership team which oversees New York City's response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the city's 11 public hospitals. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery Channel documentary The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.
Bruce Aylward is a Canadian physician and epidemiologist. Since September 2017 he has been Senior Advisor to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. He is part of the implementation of the WHO's COVAX Facility. He has past experience in the areas of polio eradication, Zika virus, and Ebola.
Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.
Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.
Alexandra Louise Phelan is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She specializes in international legal and policy issues that are related to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, including upstream drivers of disease emergence like climate change.
Sylvie Champaloux Briand is a French physician who is Director of the Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases Department at the World Health Organization. Briand led the Global Influenza Programme during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Briand launched the WHO Information Network for Epidemics which looked to counter the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.
Ibrahima Socé Fall is a Senegalese executive in the area of global health. He is Assistant Director-General for Emergencies Response at the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Assistant – Secretary-General. Fall has worked on various outbreak response and research teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including COVID-19, Ebola, malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis. He was previously the Regional Emergencies Director of the WHO in the African Region and worked on Health Security and emergency preparedness and specially on emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, epidemics and humanitarian crises.
