One of the wonders of the Chesapeake Bay region, be it Annapolis, Chestertown or Talbot County, is that it’s not unusual to find a leading expert in almost any field just around the block, so to speak. With close proximity to Washington, D.C. these communities have found themselves attracting the best and the brightest for decades.
So it wasn’t too surprising to find one of the country’s leading experts in infectious diseases who so happens to make his home just outside of Chestertown.
For more than thirty years, Dr. Mark Dybul has been in the forefront of some of the world’s most dangerous pandemics. Starting with his early work with AIDS in the 1980s, when he became a colleague and friend with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dybul has helped lead global efforts to defeat such dangerous diseases, as SARE, Ebola, MERS, and H1N1, just to name a few.
He’s the former Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria and is now Faculty Co-Director of the Center of Global Health Quality and Professor in the Department of Medicine, Georgetown Medical Center.
Earlier in his career, he joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci on clinical studies on HIV virology, immunology, and treatment, which led the first controlled trials using antiviral therapies in Africa and effort that helped save 17 million lives. Dr. Fauci continues to be his mentor and colleague, and the two discuss weekly the implementation of a plan to control the virus worldwide.
“A global pandemic requires a global response; solidarity,” Dybul says. “When AIDS hit, no one knew what to do, but we became aware that we are a more connected world.”
Dybul has been interviewed widely and always expresses his mission to help create a global template to deal not only with COVID-19 but pandemics to come
In a recent interview in One— a global movement campaigning to end extreme poverty and preventable disease—he was asked about the US response to the global pandemic. “If the virus is lurking anywhere in the world, we are at risk. If we are not engaged and don’t know the patterns of transmission, we are in deep trouble; we are flying blind into a future we have no sense of. Flying blind is incredibly dangerous.”
But Dybul is not without optimism, despite the uncoordinated US effort to contain the virus. He says it’s not “rocket science.” If we look to European countries, we can see that it controlling the transmission of the virus can be accomplished within months if we follow the recommended protocols of wearing masks, social distancing, contact tracing, and quarantining. But it takes a unified effort, and the fortitude to carry through.
This video is approximately fourteen minutes in length. For more information about the Center of Global Health Quality please go here.
Now available in podcast format.
Fred W. J. Kirchner says
Mark,
I have stopped commenting on the extremely egregious partisan political comments so frequent with the C-town Spy. The same with the KCN. Being here for 45 years, I have been very proud that you have chose to become a neighbor as I am well aware of your scientific endeavors over the years and your efforts to stem the increasing tides :oD I found your video to be very inspiring and would hope it would fall on open ears, as it has the necessary optimism, which will never sell newspapers! In my business, I have had to deal with similar issues for many years and I am well known to address the issues as: “One cannot legislate or regulate STUPID”.. Unlike many other countries, Americans fail to realize how free they are to disagree or do whatever they want, as they are allowed, and most often they tend to be contrary! I have always said that people need to see and hear what the news does NOT say, and they will then know the real news. To mention the late Paul Harvey in: “and now for the rest of the news”!! Your video was explicit, direct, factual, and optimistic without politics. This made MY day.. Glad to see you are safe..
Thank You
FRED