Heymann of WHO to keynote Foard lecture, speak on 'dilemmas in public health'

Dr. David Heymann

CHAPEL HILL — Dr. David Heymann, who directs the World Health Organization’s (WHO) polio eradication program, will be the keynote speaker for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health’s upcoming Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture.

Scheduled for April 20, Heymann’s lecture is titled “From Smallpox to SARS, Avian Influenza and Polio: Dilemmas in Public Health” and will focus on public health response to infectious diseases worldwide. Heymann is considered an expert in infectious disease control, and his work has included directing the international response to a 1995 Ebola outbreak in Africa.

The Foard event, which takes place at UNC’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education, begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception, followed by Heymann’s lecture at 6:30 p.m. The event is free to the public, but registration is requested and can be completed by contacting Kristen Huffman at (919) 966-0198 or Kristen_Huffman@unc.edu.

“We are delighted to have Dr. Heymann keynote our Foard lecture and share his knowledge of infectious disease control,” said Dr. Margaret B. Dardess, interim dean of UNC’s School of Public Health. “With the recent outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in Angola, Heymann’s talk is timely and underscores the importance of working together as a unified public health community to eliminate such diseases.”

Prior to taking on his current post at WHO in 2003, Heymann was WHO’s executive director of Communicable Diseases, the program responsible for eliminating leprosy, controlling tropical diseases, surveying and controlling emerging diseases and tuberculosis, and preventing blindness and deafness. During his career at WHO, he also has served as chief of research activities for WHO’s Global Program on AIDS.

Before joining WHO, Heymann spent 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His CDC work involved strengthening infectious disease surveillance and control, with a special emphasis on childhood immunizable diseases, African hemorrhagic fevers, pox viruses and malaria.

While in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Heymann investigated the first outbreak of Ebola in Yambuku in 1976 and the second outbreak in 1977 in Tandala; later, in 1995, he directed the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit.

Early in his career, Heymann worked for two years in India as a medical officer for the WHO’s Smallpox Eradication Program.

Dr. Fred T. Foard Jr.’s widow, Elsie D. Foard, established the Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture in 1969 to honor her husband’s work as a public health practitioner. His career spanned more than 50 years, much of it with the U.S. Public Health Service.

Highlights of Foard’s tenure include the development and strengthening of organized public health services in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions. His efforts led to major improvements in health services for American Indians and the transfer of the Indian Health Program from the U.S. Department of Interior to the U.S. Public Health Service. After retiring from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1952, Foard served until 1964 as director of the division of epidemiology for the N.C. Board of Health.

UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu

For further information please contact Emily Smith either by phone at 919.966.8498 or by e-mail at emily_smith@unc.edu.