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In memoriam
Riadh Ben-Ismail
1953–2024
It is with great sadness that we learnt of the demise of our dear colleague Dr Riadh Ben-Ismail.
Riadh was born in Nabeul in 1953, the son of a high-ranking civil servant in the Tunisian government. His family was originally from the Kerkennah islands, and he often reminisced on his happy childhood holidays surrounded by sailors and fishermen. As a brilliant student in Tunis, he often also recalled the enthusiasm and dedication that animated the youth of his then also young country.
When the opportunity arose to move to France to further his education, Riadh decided to become a physician; in 1977, he received his doctorate from the Université Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier. He completed his education in other prestigious institutions including the Université Paris-Est-Créteil-Val-de-Marne, the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie-Paris VI and the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. His areas of interest focused on parasitology and immunology; his supervisors in those years were Georges Larrouy, René Houin, Charles Salmon and Marc Gentilini.
Returning to Tunisia in the early 1980s, Riadh quickly rose to become assistant professor (1981), associate professor (1987) and professor (1994) of medicine at the University of Tunis, while practicing at La Rabta Hospital in Tunis for several years. In 1995, he was appointed head of the department of medical parasitology, replacing Professor Mohamed Sadok Ben Rachid who had been his mentor.
Riadh’s research interests focused on leishmaniasis, and this was the reason for his earliest contacts with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the 1980s, as facilitator of training workshops and later as consultant for field missions to several countries in North Africa, the Middle East and central Asia, and as temporary adviser for strategic and technical meetings convened by the Organization. On several occasions he represented Tunisia in the Joint Coordinating Board of TDR. His fascination for cutaneous leishmaniasis not only brought him in contact with many of the most renowned scientists of his generation, including Robert Killick-Kendrick, to whom he was linked by mutual friendship, but also led him to establish and lead a WHO Collaborating Centre dedicated to control of the leishmaniases at the Institut Pasteur de Tunis.
In 2002, Riadh joined WHO as Regional Adviser for Tropical Diseases and Zoonoses at its Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in Cairo. It is in this capacity that most WHO staff will remember him, as he tirelessly advocated and acted for control, elimination and eradication of neglected tropical diseases – from Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Syrian Arab Republic to Somalia and from Pakistan to Yemen. After his retirement from WHO in 2015, he continued to serve the Organization as a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (2017–2020); in the meanwhile he had moved back to the Institut Pasteur de Tunis where he proudly occupied the office of Charles Nicolle, who had directed the institute from 1902 to 1933 and won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1928.
Riadh was the author of more than 100 papers and a member of several national and international societies. In 1999, he had been awarded the Ordre National du Mérite en Education et Sciences by the President of the Republic of Tunisia.
Those who knew Riadh will remember his wit and humour, as well as his sense of duty and dedication to the health of neglected populations. Those who travelled with him will know how much he was loved and respected throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.
WHO extends its warm condolences to Dr Riadh Ben-Ismail’s family and friends.
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