Sylvie Briand

Last updated
Sylvie
Alma mater Paul Sabatier University
Scientific career
Institutions World Health Organization
CREDES
Thesis Analyse critique des differentes methodologies d'evaluation des systemes de surveillance epidemiologique : l'exemple equatorien  (1999)

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.

Contents

Early life and education

Briand completed her doctorate in medicine at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. After graduating, she completed a master's degree in public health and a doctorate in epidemiology. She started her medical career working in the Hôpitaux de Toulouse. Briand became increasingly interested in public health, and worked with the European Commission in South America on PROCED, a project which looked to control the re-emergence of cholera in South America. [1]

Research and career

In 1999, Briand joined CREDES international, a public health consultancy. In 2001 she joined the World Health Organization (WHO). [2] Her first role at the WHO was as medical officer in the Global Task force on Cholera Control, where she developed technical guidance for the management of cholera. [3] She was appointed lead for the Yellow Fever Initiative. [4] [5] The Yellow Fever Initiative saw 100 million people being vaccinated in Africa, which eliminated yellow fever outbreaks in West Africa. [5] The 2016 yellow fever outbreak in Angola created an urgent need for 28 million vaccinations, which exhausted the global supply. [6] In response to this outbreak, Briand launched the Eliminate Yellow fever Epidemics initiative, which looked to (1) protect the most vulnerable populations, (2) prevent the spread of yellow fever internationally and (3) contain local outbreaks quickly. [6]

In her next role at the WHO, Briand joined the influenza group, and was promoted to Director of the Global Influenza Programme in 2009. [5] [7] In 2012 she was made Director of the Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases, which oversees projects on antimicrobial resistance, the WHO pandemic preparedness framework and several disease control programmes. [8] In 2013 Briand worked with UNICEF to launch the Battle against Respiratory Viruses (BRaVe) initiative, which recognised acute respiratory infections represent a significant public health problem. [9] Briand emphasised that 97% of deaths due to pneumonia occur in the developing world. [10] The BRaVE initiative created a public health agenda that addressed gaps of knowledge on respiratory infections, partnered with decision making bodies and engaged with the pharmaceutical industry. [10]

In 2017 Briand was involved with the launch of OpenWHO, a massive open online course that trained first responders in how to handle medical emergencies. [11] The MOOC included four channels, covering outbreaks, emergency responses, social skills and emergency field work. [11] She established EDCARN, a network of clinicians all around the world who trained health workers to fight the Western African Ebola virus epidemic. [12] [13] She developed a pocket guide which outlined best practise on the management of Ebola patients with viral haemorrhagic fever which was distributed around community care centres and Ebola treatment units. [14] Alongside providing acute medical advice, Briand emphasised the need to engage communities to stop the spread of the disease, as well as burying patients who die with dignity and appropriate safety precautions. [14] The management of Ebola was a complex challenge; making burials safe required the World Health Organization to adapt their advice to address local beliefs. [15] After the Ebola outbreak, Briand called for more social scientists to be involved with the management of epidemics. [16] She hoped that this would help to understand why people do or do not cooperate with public health advice, and how to better design and adapt interventions so that they were more efficient and effective. [15]

Briand was closely involved with the WHO response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the extraordinary number of scientific studies, COVID-19 inspired considerable misinformation and pseudoscience. [17] [18] Working with the WHO, Briand led the creation of the Information Network for Epidemics, a strategy to counter the infodemic that spread online. [19] [20] She encouraged people, including politicians, to avoid shaking hands, and instead use elbow bumps or footshakes. [21] [22] In May 2020, Briand emphasised that it was crucial to know how SARS-CoV-2 evolved. [23] She said that the WHO were surprised by the lack of global preparedness in fighting coronavirus disease. [24] She believes that after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, countries prepared; they created stockpiles and made plans. But the 2009 swine flu pandemic was deemed "not all that bad", and the world experienced what Briand deemed "pandemic fatigue". [24] Making use of the OpenWHO, Briand launched an online programme in coronavirus disease. [25]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pandemic</span> Widespread, often global, epidemic of severe infectious disease

A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epidemic</span> Rapid spread of disease affecting a large number of people in a short time

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.

<i>Cordon sanitaire</i> (medicine) Quarantine of a geographic area

A cordon sanitaire is the restriction of movement of people into or out of a defined geographic area, such as a community, region, or country. The term originally denoted a barrier used to stop the spread of infectious diseases. The term is also often used metaphorically, in English, to refer to attempts to prevent the spread of an ideology deemed unwanted or dangerous, such as the containment policy adopted by George F. Kennan against the Soviet Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disease surveillance</span> Monitoring spread of disease to establish patterns of progression

Disease surveillance is an epidemiological practice by which the spread of disease is monitored in order to establish patterns of progression. The main role of disease surveillance is to predict, observe, and minimize the harm caused by outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic situations, as well as increase knowledge about which factors contribute to such circumstances. A key part of modern disease surveillance is the practice of disease case reporting.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, formed in 1946, is the leading national public health institute of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Its main goal is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social distancing</span> Infection control technique by keeping a distance from each other

In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other. It usually involves keeping a certain distance from others and avoiding gathering together in large groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public health emergency of international concern</span> Formal declaration by the World Health Organization

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disease X</span> Placeholder infectious disease name from the WHO

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Ferguson (epidemiologist)</span> British epidemiologist and researcher

Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute, and of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Syra Madad</span> American pathogen preparedness expert

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael J. Ryan (doctor)</span> Irish doctor and Chief Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme

Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nahid Bhadelia</span> Indian-American infectious diseases physician and researcher

Nahid Bhadelia is an American infectious-diseases physician, founding director of Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID), an associate director at National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University, and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caitlin Rivers</span> American emerging infectious disease epidemiologist

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.

Maimuna (Maia) Majumder is a computational epidemiologist and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital's Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP). She is currently working on modeling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Central Epidemic Command Center is an agency of the National Health Command Center (NHCC). It has been activated by the government of Taiwan for several disease outbreaks, such as the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. The head of the agency is Chen Shih-chung, the minister of health and welfare. The CECC is associated with the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control.

Meera A. Chand is a British microbiologist, working at Public Health England (PHE) and as a consultant with the Department of Infectious Diseases, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.

Helen Y. Chu is an American immunologist who is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Her research considers maternal immunization, with a focus on influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chu was the first physician to recognise community transmission of the coronavirus disease within the United States.

Science diplomacy is the collaborative efforts by local and global entities to solve global issues using science and technology as a base. In science diplomacy, collaboration takes place to advance science but science can also be used to facilitate diplomatic relations. This allows even conflicting nations to come together through science to find solutions to global issues. Global organizations, researchers, public health officials, countries, government officials, and clinicians have previously worked together to create effective measures of infection control and subsequent treatment. They continue to do so through sharing of resources, research data, ideas, and by putting into effect laws and regulations that can further advance scientific research. Without the collaborative efforts of such entities, the world would not have the vaccines and treatments we now possess for diseases that were once considered deadly such as tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, influenza, etc. Historically, science diplomacy has proved successful in diseases such as SARS, Ebola, Zika and continues to be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic today.

References

  1. ↑ "Briand - Symposium for Emerging Viral Diseases - UNIGE". www.unige.ch. 2016-09-13. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  2. ↑ "Dr Sylvie Briand | RSTMH". rstmh.org. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  3. ↑ Das, Parn (2003-09-01). "Infectious disease surveillance update". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 3 (9): 531. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(03)00763-1. ISSN   1473-3099. PMC   7129738 . PMID   12968627.
  4. ↑ "WHO | Epidemic focus". WHO. Archived from the original on June 12, 2016. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  5. 1 2 3 "PMAC | Prince Mahidol Award Conference". pmac2018.com. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  6. 1 2 Briand, Sylvie. "A global strategy to Eliminate Yellow fever Epidemics 2017–2026" (PDF). WHO. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  7. ↑ "WHO | In this month's Bulletin". WHO. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  8. ↑ "ESKA - Congres Medicaux". congres.eska.fr. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  9. ↑ "WHO | Battle against Respiratory Viruses (BRaVe) initiative". WHO. Archived from the original on March 6, 2014. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  10. 1 2 Briand, Sylvie. "Burden of acute respiratory infections" (PDF). ISIRV. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  11. 1 2 "WHO | Saving lives by sharing knowledge online". WHO. Archived from the original on March 14, 2018. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  12. ↑ Frattali, Carol M. (1996), "Functional Assessment of Communication: Merging Public Policy with Clinical Views", Forums in Clinical Aphasiology, Whurr Publishers Ltd, pp. 189–209, doi:10.1002/9780470699171.ch6, ISBN   978-0-470-69917-1 , retrieved 2020-05-20
  13. ↑ Briand, Sylvie; Bertherat, Eric; Cox, Paul; Formenty, Pierre; Kieny, Marie-Paule; Myhre, Joel K.; Roth, Cathy; Shindo, Nahoko; Dye, Christopher (2014-09-25). "The International Ebola Emergency". New England Journal of Medicine. 371 (13): 1180–1183. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1409858 . ISSN   0028-4793. PMID   25140855.
  14. 1 2 "WHO | Videos: Ebola outbreak response". WHO. Archived from the original on August 23, 2014. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  15. 1 2 "A paradigm shift in outbreak response". SciDev. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  16. ↑ "How COVID-19 has changed the use and communication of evidence". nesta. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  17. ↑ "How experts are fighting COVID-19 'infodemic'". World Economic Forum. 5 March 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  18. ↑ "Don't Just Debunk Covid-19 Myths. Learn From Them". Impact of Social Sciences. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  19. ↑ Zarocostas, John (2020-02-29). "How to fight an infodemic". The Lancet. 395 (10225): 676. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30461-X . ISSN   0140-6736. PMC   7133615 . PMID   32113495.
  20. ↑ Network, The OECD Forum (2020-04-23). "Managing the Infodemic: A critical condition for an effective global response to the COVID-19 pandemic". The OECD Forum Network. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  21. ↑ Blackall (now), Molly; Weaver, Matthew; Davidson, Helen; Rourke (earlier), Alison; Harris, John (2020-03-01). "Italy death toll rises to 34 as Dominican Republic reports first case – as it happened". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  22. ↑ Raymond, Adam K. (2020-03-02). "Public Health Experts: Try 'Footshake' Instead of Handshake to Avoid Coronavirus". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  23. ↑ "WHO stresses need to find source of coronavirus". Rappler. Agence France-Presse. 13 May 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  24. 1 2 "WHO 'surprised' by states' lack of pandemic preparation". Rappler. Agence France-Presse. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  25. ↑ "Emerging respiratory viruses, including COVID-19: methods for detection, prevention, response and control". OpenWHO. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
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