1. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum is the general director of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Institut National pour la Recherche Biomedicale.
22 Facts About Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was part of team at the Yambuku Catholic Mission Hospital that investigated the first Ebola outbreak, and was part of the effort that discovered Ebola as a new disease, although his exact role is still subject to controversy.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was educated in schools run by the Catholic Jesuit order.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum studied medicine, starting in 1962, at Lovanium University in Leopoldville where he became interested in microbiology and graduated in 1969.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum earned a PhD in virology at the University of Leuven in Belgium, working on viral infections with mouse models.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum returned to Zaire in 1973 and worked in the cholera outbreak control.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum first came across the Ebola virus in 1976 at a Belgian hospital in Yambuku.
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Peter Piot 8.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was the first scientist to come into contact with the virus and survive.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum took the blood of a sick nurse, which was sent for analysis at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, then to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Peter Piot used the sample to discover Ebola.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was appointed dean of the University of Kinshasa Medical School in 1978.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum has acted as an adviser to the World Health Organization Emergency Committee on Ebola.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum recognised the sociocultural challenges of Ebola, encouraging hospitals to improve their infection control and community engagement.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum worked with David L Heymann on the Ebola outbreak in 1995.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was called by the director of the Kikwit General Hospital who was asking for help with an outbreak of deadly diarrhea.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum has chaired the international committees that looked to control the Ebola outbreaks in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum leads research into the reservoirs of the Ebola virus in the DRC.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum has developed an anti-Ebola serum therapy which, using antibodies from convalescent patients, was first tried by another medical team during the 1976 outbreak in Yambuku and subsequently recommended for future outbreaks by the International Commission set up by the Government of DRC.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum pioneered the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine during the outbreak to limit the spread of the virus, including vaccinating health professionals.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum is globally known leader in the fight against Ebola and is a key figure in the World Health Organization efforts to combat infectious diseases.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 International Symposium on Filoviruses.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was named as one of Nature's 10 in 2018 and 2019.
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Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was awarded 2023 WHO Director General's Global Leaders Awards as a distinguished scientist and public health leader who was closely involved in the discovery of Ebola before advancing to leadership positions in global health.