This intensive 2-week course (4-15 April 2016) is intended for medical and public health professionals involved in field investigations of infectious disease outbreaks. The course will provide professionals with a thorough approach of the methods of outbreak investigation of emerging and re-emerging pathogens including Ebola Virus Disease, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, Plague, Avian Influenza subtype H5N1, pandemic influenza, enterovirus 71, and others. This course will cover methods and processes used to detect, investigate, interpret and report on infectious disease outbreaks and include wide ranging topics from preparing to respond to an emerging threat, implementing multi-disciplinary field investigations, analyzing and interpreting results from field studies, to communicating results to different partners.
The course has been set up by Maria Van Kerkhove, from Institut Pasteur Paris, and Malik Peiris, co-director of HKU-Pasteur Research Pole. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove is the Head of the Outbreak Investigation Task Force (OITF) at Institut Pasteur’s Center for Global Health. The OITF is a multidisciplinary team of Pasteurians located across the Institut Pasteur International Network with experience in field investigations of infectious diseases: experienced epidemiologists, virologists, microbiologists, laboratory technicians, veterinarians, social scientists, clinicians and others who are ready to provide support to the management of and response to emerging and re-emerging threats in countries where Institut Pasteur operates and beyond. Chris Mok, principal investigator at HKU-Pasteur Research Pole also takes part in the Infectious Disease Outbreak Investigation course.
Over the past years, HKU-Pasteur Research Pole has already been committed in organizing educational and training programs regarding outbreaks investigation in the Southeast Asia region. The latest of the 3 international courses "Outbreak Investigation and Acute Response" was held in November 2015 at the Institut Pasteur in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.