David L. Heymann
Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication
Dr David L. Heymann is currently the Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication at the World Health Organization (WHO). Prior to that, from July 1998 until July 2003, Dr Heymann was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster which includes WHO’s programmes on infectious and tropical diseases, and from which the public health response to SARS was mounted in 2003. From October 1995 to July 1998 Dr Heymann was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases, and prior to that was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS.
Before joining WHO, Dr Heymann worked for thirteen years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo – formerly Zaire) on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in CDC-supported activities. These activities aimed at strengthening capacity in surveillance of infectious diseases and their control, with special emphasis on the childhood immunizable diseases including measles and polio, African haemorrhagic fevers, poxviruses and malaria. While based in Africa, Dr Heymann participated in the investigation of the first outbreak of Ebola in Yambuku (former Zaire) in 1976, then again investigated the second outbreak of Ebola in 1977 in Tandala, and in 1995 directed the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit.
Prior to these thirteen years in Africa, Dr Heymann worked two years in India as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.
Dr Heymann holds a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. from Wake Forest University, a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has completed practical epidemiology training in the two year Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) of CDC. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academies, and has published over 140 scientific articles on infectious diseases and related issues in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals, and authored several chapters on infectious diseases in medical textbooks. He is the editor of the 18th edition of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, a joint publication of WHO and the American Public Health Association.
In 2004 he received the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence. In 2005 he was awarded a Welling Professorship at the George Washington University School of Public Health and the 2005 Donald Mackay medal by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In 2005, he became a member of the Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa (MACEPA) Advisory Board.