News

Experts: Yellow Fever Epidemic in Congo and Angola

Published: 23 August 2016

“The World Health Organization's (WHO) emergency committee on deadly yellow fever will meet on Aug. 31 to review outbreaks in Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, a spokesman said on Tuesday, as a major vaccination campaigns continues.” (Reuters and The Washington Post)

Dr. Anne Andermann, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University

"In public health, no news means the system is doing its job. Whereas playing catch up once an outbreak is out of control is slower and more costly, particularly the human cost due to preventable deaths and the impact this has on families. It is easy to point fingers and assign blame when situations start to unravel, but outbreaks need to be contained at the source, and to do this, there needs to be heavy investments in strong public health infrastructure and universal access to primary health care to identify outbreaks early, diagnose them correctly and prevent them from spreading."—Dr. Anne Andermann

She’s a medical specialist in public health and preventive medicine. Dr. Anne Andermann is the founding director of the CLEAR Collaboration  that aims to help frontline health workers address the underlying social causes of poor health through a combination of direct patient care, referral and advocacy for larger social change. Dr. Andermann has previously worked on research capacity strengthening for low- and middle-income countries at the World Health Organization in Geneva

anne.andermann [at] mcgill.ca (English, French)

Brian Ward, Centre for the Study of Host Resistance, McGill University

“Although there has been a real shortage of vaccine for Canadians the last few months, Sanofi announced last week that we could now order as much as we want.”—Brian Ward

Professor Ward is an expert on vaccines, immunity and

Brian.ward [at] mcgill.ca (English, French)

Back to top