Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove is the COVID-19 Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the Head of the Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit in the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme.
Why you should listen
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove's research has spanned zoonotic, respiratory and emerging/re-emerging diseases such as avian influenza, MERS, SARS, COVID-19, Ebola, Marburg, plague and Zika. Of particular interest are factors associated with transmission between animals and humans, the epidemiology of zoonotic pathogens, and ensuring that research directly informs public health policies for action.
Van Kerkhove completed her undergraduate degree at Cornell University, an MS Degree in epidemiology at Stanford University and a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Prior to joining WHO in 2017, she was the Head of the Outbreak Investigation Task Force at Institut Pasteur's Center for Global Health in Paris, where she was responsible for establishing public health rapid response teams for infectious disease outbreaks. Her previous roles include a senior fellow at Imperial College London in the MRC Center for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling and epidemiologist at the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia.
Maria Van Kerkhove’s TED Talk
Maria Van Kerkhove, Whitney Pennington Rodgers
How to end the pandemic -- and prepare for the next
20 minutes 39 secondsWe will get out of this pandemic, says Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO). The question is how fast -- and if we'll take what we've learned from the past two years and apply it to the next emerging pathogen. In conversation with TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Van Kerkhove provides insights on the Omicron variant, details a pandemic preparedness protocol under development at WHO and shares what we all can do to bring the pandemic to a speedy end. "Remain vigilant," Van Kerkhove says. "Everything you do ... will either get us closer to ending this pandemic -- or it will prolong it." (This conversation was recorded on December 3, 2021.)Posted Dec 2021
