In 2014 many individuals in West Africa found themselves at the center of an ebola outbreak. They watched in some cases nine out of ten individuals who got ebola die. The CDC and other public health organizations sent out emergency teams to help these countries contain the outbreaks and begin vaccine trials. Join us this week as we dive in with Dr. Jane Seward into the world of infections diseases and particularly the ebola outbreaks. Just a few months ago we are hearing about another outbreak happening in many of these countries again. Dr. Seward will provide us with insight into how the previous outbreaks are impacting the current outbreak. 

Dr Seward graduated with a medical degree from the University of Western Australia, did her training in clinical pediatrics at Tulane University in New Orleans and obtained her MPH in epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta.  Her background includes experience in maternal and child health, global public health and viral diseases with a focus on vaccine preventable diseases, vaccine policy and evaluation.  She worked for UN agencies while she and her family resided in China for 5 years in the 1990s.  After returning to Atlanta in 1996, she joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where her work was primarily related to varicella, measles, mumps and other vaccine preventable diseases.  She has considerable experience in other viral diseases and in infectious disease outbreak control and emergency response.  During the 2014-2016 West Africa ebola epidemic, she worked on the CDC-sponsored Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone spending 8-9 months in the country leading the CDC vaccine field team work and otherwise working on the trial from CDC headquarters in Atlanta.  After retiring from CDC in late 2016, she worked at the Task Force for Global Health for several years on global influenza including vaccine policy and pandemic preparedness.  She is now a guest researcher at CDC.