Helen Rees

Helen Rees OBE GCOB D.Sc. Medicine (honoris causa) LLD (honoris causa) is a medical doctor, and the founder and executive director of Wits RHI, the largest research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a Personal Professor in the University of Witwatersrand's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, co-director and co-founder of the African Leadership in Vaccinology Expertise (ALIVE), Honorary Professor in the Department of Clinical Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an Honorary Fellow at Cambridge University's Murray Edwards College, UK. Quotes Be brave, take the right decisions and make a decision that will leave you without regrets. When the military surrounded the clinic with Casspirs and heavy weapons, demanding that we hand over our injured patients and the young people who had sought refuge in the clinic, I remember using my then bigger frame. I was pregnant, hidden under a big blood covered apron, to block the entrance of soldiers into the emergency ward of the clinic. I very optimistically waved my NAMDA [National Medical and Dental Association] booklet in the face of a senior army sergeant and I said, ‘My patients have rights, we as health care workers have rights’. But we lost the argument, the youths were taken. South Africa has challenges. South Sudan and our region have challenges. You will be working in a world of global uncertainties. All of your skills are needed to improve the health of people world-wide. As you move into the next phase of your lives, remember Wits University’s motto, Scientia et Labore, which means knowledge and work. So continue to grow your knowledge. Learning is never over. Be brave, and choose to do the right thing. Don’t be afraid of failure as your greatest lessons might come from this. Be an optimist and look for opportunity in adversity. Work in teams of fabulous people as it will take you further. Be a giver and do the five-minute favour. Work hard, and be sure to have fun on the way. Use your lives, your laughs, you labour, to create your own wisdom. You have many years ahead of you to do this. We realised that there was a dearth of research and interventions for the health needs of a new South Africa where the focus had shifted to the whole population instead of just on a minority population. Just take that experience and let's do this again as a bigger global health community. First, it’s important to clarify that cVDPV is a different virus from the wild poliovirus, and will undergo a separate process to validate its absence once wild polio has been eradicated globally. Second, I want to underscore that the ongoing cVDPV2 outbreaks in Africa do not affect the programme’s confidence that wild polio is gone from the region. Certification is backed by extensive data and a thorough evaluation process that demonstrates wild polio transmission has been interrupted on the continent. In Africa, an independent body of experts called the African Regional Certification Commission for polio eradication (ARCC) oversees this process by carefully reviewing country documentation and analyzing the quality of surveillance systems and immunization coverage. With this intensive monitoring of polio programmes across the continent, the ARCC is able to confirm with 100% certainty that wild polio is gone from the region. In an interview cVDPVs can occur if not enough children receive the polio vaccine. In under-immunized populations, the live weakened virus in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) can pass between individuals and, over time, change to a form that can cause paralysis—resulting in cVDPV cases. This means that the cVDPV outbreaks we’re seeing today are revealing pockets across the continent where immunization rates are too low. The reason for the increase in cases can be explained by low immunity to type 2 poliovirus, which causes the vast majority of cVDPV cases. This is in part due to a global vaccine switch that occurred in 2016, when countries stopped using the trivalent OPV (which protects against all three forms of polio) and replaced it with the bivalent OPV (which protects against just type 1 and 3). She spoke about how cVDPV outbreaks happen For years, the wild poliovirus has only existed in a small area on the continent. Nigeria reported its last case of paralysis due to wild polio four years ago, but most other countries haven’t seen a wild polio case in quite some time. Across the continent, population immunity levels to type 1 polio (the only type of wild polio that remains in the world) and surveillance networks have continued to protect against any wild polio importation from remaining wild polio endemic countries. However, the increasing number of cVDPV outbreaks across Africa is a reminder that countries cannot afford to let their guard down, and must continue reaching every child with the polio vaccine. The same tactics that stop wild polio can be used to stop cVDPVs – high vaccination coverage and strong surveillance. The polio programme in Africa has proven experience and strategies to address cVDPV outbreaks. But we know that we cannot rely only on existing tactics, which is why the programme is innovating and adapting its strategies to address the challenge of cVDPVs specifically. External links Category:Physicians from South Africa Category:Women academics from South Africa Category:University of Cambridge faculty Category:Living people Category:Medical scientists Category:Harvard University alumni Category:University of Cambridge alumni