They study the planet’s deadliest diseases in remote, conflict-prone areas in countries with the lowest health spending and fewest resources, yet the world relies on them to stop the next pandemic. Meet eight Africa-based scientists and doctors using cutting-edge genomic tools, data-sharing platforms and shoe-leather epidemiology to identify, track, and counter the spread of emerging pathogens on a continent that’s spawned some of humanity’s most devastating diseases — yellow fever, HIV, Ebola, and Lassa among them. A new strain of the mpox-causing monkeypox virus spreading in central Africa is the latest scourge to set off a global health emergency, but climate change, urbanization, deforestation, and intensive livestock production are accelerating the emergence of contagious threats.
This is only heightening the need for early detection and response by a growing cadre of local experts. These include: Ibrahima Socé Fall, an infectious diseases epidemiologist from Senegal who heads the World Health Organization’s neglected tropical diseases global program. He’s spent more than three decades training local medical teams to not only control malaria, but prepare for and respond to dangerous new outbreaks.
“The best epidemiologists are in Africa right now because we have so many outbreaks and are building capacity to respond to that,” Fall says. “In 2016-2017, we were sending samples to Europe and the US to confirm Ebola and Lassa fever. Now, we can do it in A.