Remembering Joel Breman, Ebola pioneer and beloved global health mentor
Pioneering disease investigator and beloved global health mentor Joel Breman died on April 6 at the age of 87. Breman was part of the team that investigated the first known Ebola outbreak in 1976.
Joel Breman, a leader in efforts to control smallpox, Ebola, malaria and several other infectious diseases, died this month in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at the age of 87.
Peter Piot, a fellow disease investigator, remembers the exact date that he met Breman. It was October 18, 1976, and Piot, then a young physician and microbiologist, had come to the city of Kinshasa in central Africa (in current-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) to investigate a terrifying, deadly, nameless new disease. Breman, already 40 years old and with several epidemic investigations under his belt, was there working for what was then called the U.S. Center for Disease Control.
Piot says it was clear
