The Global Burden of Infectious Disease

Despite predictions of their eradication in the 1960s, infectious diseases remain a significant cause of global health, economic, and social problems. There has been a renewed focus on the background "matrix" of infections that occur around the globe, as well as on emerging, re-emerging, and deliberately emerging (i.e. bioterror) agents. This talk will provide a global health perspective on infectious diseases in 2007, and highlight the lessons that can be learned from three conditions (HIV/AIDS, influenza, and SARS).

Daniel Libraty is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is a member of the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research (CIDVR), and the Division of Infectious Diseases/Department of Medicine. He received his MD degree from the University of California, San Diego. He completed his post-graduate residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and obtained subspecialty training in infectious diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on understanding the protective and pathogenic human immune responses to emerging and re-emerging viral diseases such as dengue, hantavirus, SARS, and influenza. He has lived and traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and other parts of the world in the course of working on these infectious diseases.