23 min listen
A Shot at Change: The Making of a Vaccine
FromTeamistry
ratings:
Length:
27 minutes
Released:
Nov 16, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In the West African country of Burkina Faso in the 1980s, an 18-year-old boy is killed in the road. Why? A case of meningitis. The meningitis epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa spurred a global race to find a vaccine, led by the founding of the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP). This network of doctors, vaccine developers, public health officials, and UN workers converged to develop an inexpensive vaccine – without Big Pharma. Instead, they built teams as an ecosystem of thriving partnerships. In this episode of Teamistry, we hear from the original MVP team and how they persevered despite enormous challenges.Dr. Samba Sow, Director General of the Centre for Vaccine Development in Mali, Dr. Suresh Jhadav, Executive Director of the Serum Institute of India and Dr. Marc LaForce, then Director of the Meningitis Vaccine Project. We also hear from Dr. Ngozi Erondu, an infectious disease specialist who explains MVP's legacy in building "South-South" collaborations, and Dr. Mark Alderson, project leader at PATH, describes how the team brought the vaccine from labs in one part of the globe to clinics in another.Teamistry is an original podcast from Atlassian. For more on the series, go to https://www.atlassian.com/blog/podcast.
Released:
Nov 16, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (30)
The Wizards of Menlo Park: It's time to set the record straight: Thomas Edison's greatest achievement was not the lightbulb. In fact, he wasn't even the first to invent it. The unrecognized master stroke of Edison was he brought together some of the brightest minds to collaborate, exchange ideas, and work in creative ways to change the world as we knew it. In the first episode of Teamistry, host Gabriela Cowperthwaite journeys to late-19th century Menlo Park, where a team of unsung heroes is hard at work setting up an electricity grid that could light up a New York city block. There's a lot at stake: financial ruin, countless hours of labor, and Edison's very reputation. We hear from David Burkus, author of The Myths of Creativity and Jill Jonnes, author of Empires of Light. We also get the insights of Robert Friedel, University of Maryland history professor and coauthor of Edison's Electric Light, Kathleen Carlucci, Director of the Thomas Edison Center, and Paul Israel, Director of th by Teamistry