David Heymann—WHO's public health guru

Abstract

David Heymann is the Representative of the Director General for polio eradication at the WHO. Before that he was Executive Director of WHO’s communicable diseases cluster which includes WHO’s programmes on infectious and tropical diseases and he led the public-health response to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. In the mid to late 1990s Heymann was Director of WHO’s programme on emerging and other communicable diseases and before that was the chief of research activities in WHO’s global programme on AIDS. Before joining WHO Heymann worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on an assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He worked on a range of projects including improving control and surveillance of infectious diseases with special emphasis on the childhood immunisable diseases including measles and polio African haemorrhagic fevers poxviruses and malaria. While based in Africa Heymann investigated the first outbreak of Ebola in Yambuku (former Zaire) in 1976 then in the second outbreak of Ebola in 1977 in Tandala and in 1995 directed the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit. Before 1976 one of Heymann’s first public-health jobs was in India as a medical officer in the WHO smallpox eradication programme. (excerpt)