Invitation to VC’s Occasional Lecture

Date: 
Thursday, May 14, 2015 - 10:00
Venue: 
Auditorium,Centre for African Wetlands

The University Community is cordially invited to the Vice-Chancellor’s Occasional lecture as follows:

 

Topic:     Why Transdisciplinary Science is critical to address Global Health Challenges: lessons from HIV/AIDS

Speaker: William G. Powderly, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, USA

 

Profile

William Powderly, M.D., is the J. William Campbell Professor of Medicine and Director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis.  He is also Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Washington University School of Medicine.  From 2005 to 2012, he was Dean of Medicine and Head of the School of Medicine and Medical Sciences at University College Dublin in Ireland.

 

Dr. Powderly has been actively involved in HIV-related clinical research for over twenty-five years. He has been a member of numerous advisory groups on HIV and infectious diseases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Canadian Institute for Health Research, and the European Medicines Agency. He is the author of more than 350 scientific journal articles and book chapters on HIV and AIDS, and the co-editor of a major international textbook of Infectious Diseases.  He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians In Ireland, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Association for Science. 

 

Abstract

Major global public health challenges are strongly correlated with economic development.The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age are at the root of much inequality in health, and these social determinants are relevant to infectious and non-communicable diseases alike. 

For 1/6 of the world’s population, the traditional challenges associated with extreme poverty- malnutrition, maternal mortality, premature childhood death from diarrhea and respiratory illness, and infectious diseases (especially HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other neglected tropical diseases) – remain vitally important problems.  However, in many low-middle income countries, economic advances have led to a rapid transition to a greater problem of diseases of lifestyle, with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and cancer now the greatest threat to health these countries face. Global infectious diseases straddle these two separate domains - most pandemics emerge from developing countries but provide a global threat to all.  Thirty-five years of HIV/AIDS has taught us valuable lessons on these issues.

 

To address the challenge of global health, there is a need to build up public health infrastructure in resource-poor countries, to allow for early detection of emerging problems.  We also need to continue to apply scientific discovery to these problems to allow innovative solutions to be developed.  In addition, as new technologies are developed (whether they are in diagnosis, treatment or prevention) there is a need to consider implementation early in the process so that deployment in resource-limited settings is planned early in development rather than, as is often the case currently, being considered 20-30 years late.  However we cannot expect to be able to translate scientific discovery without paying close attention to the economic, social and political environment in which infectious diseases – endemic and epidemic –flourish.