The next GHI workshop will be on the Ebola outbreak, taking place on Tuesday, October 28th at 7pm.
As you may be aware, this outbreak has received extensive media coverage over the past few months. The death toll has exceeded 4,000 in West Africa, and on September 30, the CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the United States. What is the situation like in West Africa? What are the greatest barriers to health care access? How much of a serious risk is there in Canada? If you are curious to learn more about Ebola, this workshop is for you!
Our first speaker will be Dr. Eleni Galanis, the Interim Medical Director of the Communicable Diseases Prevention and Control Services at the BCCDC and Clinical Associate Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health. In 2001, she was part of an international WHO team chosen to go to Africa to respond to an Ebola outbreak. Her work at the BCCDC focuses on the epidemiology of communicable diseases and outbreak investigations. She has recently been featured in the media, discussing BC’s preparations against the current Ebola outbreak.
Our second speaker will be Dr. Michael Rekart, a Clinical Professor of Global Health at the UBC School of Population and Public Health. From 1985 – 2010, Dr. Rekart was the Director of the STI/HIV Prevention and Control Program for British Columbia. For two and a half decades, he led BC’s public health response to sequential HIV outbreaks in gay men, injection drug users and heterosexuals, as well as the public health effort to control North America’s largest per-capita outbreak of heterosexual syphilis. He just returned from a 1 year mission for Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF – Doctors Without Borders) in Swaziland, Africa, and he is currently preparing to embark on another MSF mission to Sierra Leone where he will work on Ebola. Dr. Rekart will be speaking about this upcoming mission
Location: MSAC VC Room (Downstairs)
Date: Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
Time: 7pm (Food will be served at 6:30pm)
The workshop will be videoconferenced to:
IMP: MSB 131
NMP: NHSC 9-370
SMP #1: HSC 148
SMP #2: KGH 228
Call-In: 1-877-792-2270 #30320
Please RSVP by filling out the following form by Monday, October 27th, at noon:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1M4osXJTBLRqn75CXqFTnQryt5lAJqYt_wOZqMLxlKNU/viewform?usp=send_form
Hope to see you all there!