 Good morning and welcome to our social media corner. I'm Diana and I'm the social media manager at IEA. We are live from Vienna, our headquarters, and there's a lot going on here this week. Our annual general conference is going on until the end of the week, and today is the second and last day of our scientific forum. This year, the forum is all about the importance of nuclear science in preparing for and containing future pandemics. If you want to watch it live, you still can. Check the link in the comment section. Let me introduce you to our next guest, Dr. Christian Happy. Dr. Happy is a professor of molecular biology and genomics and the director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Happy, thank you so much for being here with us today. It's a big pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you came to be working in this area? Well, Christian Happy is my name. I'm originally from Cameroon, and I'm the director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomic of Infectious Diseases at Rudimus University in Eden, Nigeria. And I'm a professor of molecular biology and genomics. I've worked in this field, in the field of infectious disease for over two decades, studying from malaria. And the reason being that I grew up in Africa and then as growing up, I was victim of malaria several. And I remember when I was age nine, I had one of the worst episodes of malaria. I almost died. And I remember telling my mom, I asked my mom at the time, why was I that ill? And why is it that there was no cure for a disease called malaria? And her answer was, I don't just know. And I made up my mind that day that if I grew up and that disease was on, I was going to find a cure for it. I grew up had a first degree, had, I mean, and then while growing up, I think when I was in my A level, I read about Watson and Crick, and these are the people that discovered the DNA molecule. And I saw the power behind that, you know, the molecule called DNA, because in that small pamphlet that I read, it was actually said it's a molecule of life. And I saw anything that leaves, you know, had DNA. And that really inspired me. So I went on to study about chemistry and because they were back chemists. And the dream was to use the same approach or to use, understand the DNA and then try to use the DNA to cure malaria. That was my dream at the time. And I studied about chemistry and then I went on to apply the skill of back chemistry to malaria first and then try to understand mechanisms of anti-malaria resistance because it was a big problem in Africa. How do you solve the problem of resistance? How do you understand the mechanism? And it's in that process that I work with others in the team, I mean, in several teams, and we discovered the molecules that were responsible for resistance like chloroquine, suffodoxy and pyromethamine. And that really became very important because we used such information to change the policies of anti-malaria use on the African continent. So that, for me, actually was a situation whereby you could apply, you know, genetics, you know, to a problem, which was the malaria and that was my dream of childhood. So I spent the first 12 years of my life working on malaria and, you know, and then I was at Harvard University. But, you know, at Harvard, even though you are in the pristine laboratories and you're working in an environment that has so much, but you keep having news back from home, back in Africa, you keep hearing such negative news about, you know, malaria, lasa fever, so many diseases killing in Africa and then you are very helpless, simply because when you hear these news, you know, you find yourself in a situation where you're adding much value to those that have already and then you look back and then there's nothing, there's no hope. And I made a rational decision to go back to Africa and then the whole reason was to go back and then start this what I call a revolution. So that is basically changing the narrative, thinking about how you can reposition Africa scientifically and then how you can enable Africans to take responsibility for the science and start doing good science and then start addressing problems of Africans by Africans and build a capacity on the ground so that Africa can also have a voice at a table whereby we can talk, you know, as peer to orders and then contribute significantly, you know, to the problems of the world and make Africa also a player instead of being just a recipient. So that was really what led me to go back and then we started this what I call a revolution and then in a few years it has yielded significant fruits. Wow, and that's such a beautiful revolution. Also, one of your biggest and most impactful career accomplishments was the early diagnosis and confirmation of the Ebola virus disease in Nigeria. We would love to hear more about it. Well, I think it's an interesting story if you want to hear more about it. I think it's a combination of several factors. I mean, as a Christian, I think it's something that was got out of the end. First of all, you know, a lot of people, when I decided to return, a lot of people thought I was crazy. How do you leave a place in the Harvard University and go to nowhere, in the middle of nowhere in Africa? So how can you make such irrational decision in court? But, you know, the event eventually proved afterward that it was irrational because I made a decision in 2011 and then in 2013 we started having Ebola in Africa. But between 2011 and 2013, I had the opportunity to apply for a grant by the US NIH and then also by the World Bank. So I was able to establish the foundation of this African Center of Excellence for Genomic Of Infectious Disease. So we had a platform where we started building the necessary capacity for Africa to respond to epidemic and pandemics or pandemic potential like Ebola. But then when Ebola struck, I was on the verge to go to the US to take my son, you know, for medical care. But for some reason, I wasn't able to get a flight and Ebola struck and I was sitting in country and I got a call that fateful day, that was July 28th at 8 p.m. in the night by one of my mentors, Professor Yawale Tomori. He called me and he said, well, it looks like there is a suspected case of Ebola in Lagos, Nigeria. For those that know, you know, that kind of phone call and that kind of news could be very chilling. Because Lagos is home to 25 million people and then when you see, you hear about Ebola in that kind of place, then the next thing that comes to your mind is how the disease can spread and if disease spread is very likely that a third, if not half of the African population could be disseminated because that city is one of the major hubs of travel, international travel in Africa and in the world and has one of the busiest seaports in Africa. So imagine if, you know, the disease spread in that city. That would have been a major catastrophe. Secondly, the thing that came to my mind was the fact that a few days from the time when I was informed, Nigeria was gathering one of the largest religious gathering in the world and that is the Redeemed Church of God Convention and that convention normally bring about five million people in one single spot in a week and you imagine if in that gathering you have somebody that has Ebola. So these were things that was going through my mind and I drove that night at 9 p.m. in the most dangerous road in Nigeria from my house in Ibadon to my lab without escort, without security and I went to the lab to attend to that sample and as early as 6 o'clock in the morning I had confirmed the first case of Ebola in Nigeria but then that became very critical and very important because as I did a confirmation this is within hours of receiving samples then I contacted the ministry and then the other public health officers and we set up what I call the major manhunt we tracked everybody that was on that plane we tracked everyone that came into contact with that index patient and we brought everybody in one spot and that was a major, major what we call operation, public health operation and you know we got fortunately 20 of them were infected and it died but the beautiful thing is that we were able to do this and then the outbreak and the epidemic really stopped there in the next few weeks we were basically just doing surveillance across the country trying to see whether people got infected or whether people had a virus that we didn't know and really it stopped really there and then this went into the announce of medicine and public health because in 93 days Nigeria was able to contain an outbreak like Ebola with only 20 infected you know and you know it did and this is incredible to see this kind of thing happen and then you can, if I look in retrospect if I didn't go back at the point, at that time things could have gone way, way, way worse if they didn't have the ability to diagnose quickly, if they didn't know what to do that would have been a problem and that's exactly what played in other African countries they didn't have the ability to diagnose in Guinea for instance, when they had the first cases they didn't have facility, they have no skills the sample were flown from Guinea to France it took about a month for the result to come back and imagine what happened within that time people get infected and as people get infected then the epidemic you know becomes gets out of control so that's one of the things you know that's some of the things that we did in Africa but what again the other key role that we played in the response you know to the Ebola epidemic in Africa in 2014 was actually to bring skill and knowledge to get to Sierra Leone this was a country where we were working and for the first time the global health community was seeing how you can use and apply genomics into public health response that has never happened in the history of public health but for the first time we actually sequenced that is elucidated the genetic map of the first 99 patients that got infected in Sierra Leone have the genetic makeup of the virus that was the first time people were to see that and we were able to use such information to show the hotspot and then show transmission community transmission and that was the first time where people could see that I remember having a lot of pushback from major international organizations and research you know and I said look your knowledge is 50 years old we were talking about 2014 knowledge not 1960 45 knowledge where you were established and I am glad that you know that revolution that we started in 2014 has become the standard today today you hear about GIZED open data access we partner that in 2014 we created that open data sharing forms because when we created open data sharing of Ebola we made it openly accessible to the international community for those that were interested in developing medicine those that were interested in developing diagnostics and those that were interested in developing therapeutic to have access to this genome sequence of Ebola Ebola sample in West Africa so these were the things that we partnered and I am glad that today it has become the standard people don't talk about it but yet we really started that revolution open data sharing because genome epidemiology to respond to outbreak all of that started with what we did in 2014 that's very very impressive to say the least and I also understand that your laboratory is presently conducting one of the largest zoonotic surveillance projects in West Africa can you tell us more about it oh yeah I think our zoonotic research program actually started a few years back when we were working on a disease called LASA fever LASA fever is a viral disease just like Ebola it killed as much in West Africa and yes people are very much aware it's one of the WHO priority disease now but as far back as 2007 I was in Harvard then this virus that was first reported in Nigeria in 1969 was not able to be diagnosed in Africa samples used to be sent from Africa to Germany and for molecular confirmation and any time the result came back 90% of the patients were infected were dead simply because they didn't know the cause one of the first thing we did was actually to set up the first diagnostic facility in Africa in Nigeria would train people how to do it and then they took ownership and then decided to do it themselves now at the time where they talk about LASA fever being a disease that is transmitted from rodent animals to humans this is a disease that is an outcome of a spillover from animal to human and then where are the evidences it's always anecdotal so we went on to actually to start doing the first zoonotic surveillance actually to establish the spillover origin from animal to human and then we set up a program to link up to capture rodents in households across Nigeria and also to identify people that got infected with these viruses those that survived and those that died and we were able to establish the first connection using viral genome sequencing in rats and in human and we were able to show that in some household we had the same virus in the rat and the same virus in human that was the first demonstration and clear connection or spillover of that disease from animal to human now we went further to look at other diseases so we have a very large zoonotic program in West Africa looking at this is like African swine fever looking at other zoonotic diseases you know Maburg and COVID in bats so we have a very large zoonotic program covering from Cameroon to Nigeria all the way to Sierra Leone, Senegal and that program really empowers not only from the hacker workers but also veterinarians right now we have a large team of veterinarians we are employing over 20 veterinarians across the region and we are all working on this zoonotic program so and we are doing this we are doing this in collaboration with the University of Cambridge we also had a new collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture so in the African swine fever and we also have support recently I got funding from the Trinity Challenge it was a big initiative globally and all of these initiatives are all looking at zoonotic diseases and right now we also recently created a new directorate we have a new directorate in our program actually we focus on zoonotic diseases I was fortunate that I was able to bring in my wife who is a veterinarian and then the pathologist so really heading this program because she has over 20 years experience in the field and then she is really heading this huge program and what can we, our families our friends, our neighbors do to help prevent the next zoonotic disease outbreak I think it's about reporting zoonotic disease outbreak will start with people getting in contact with animals to the occupation to where they live but often the challenge that we find and end up with outbreak is lack of reporting if people are educated and if people are empowered to report and they report well then we can actually have hands and control those infections as soon as possible one of the big challenges that we have in the world is how do we report these mechanisms what are the mechanisms of reporting people if you want to report I give you instances someone can first of all if somebody has an African swine fever in his own farm and he knows that if I report they will come and then all my pigs and things will be killed what mechanism do you have in place to compensate that person so if somebody doesn't have a mechanism of compensation think about older you know zoonotic diseases H1N1 all of those so when farmers are afraid that they could lose all their livestock compensation is a problem can we set up a mechanism where there is transparency if you report then there is a direct mechanism to compensate you for your livestock these are very important questions and then also we need to let people realize that it is important to report because in reporting you not only prevent diseases from spreading but you also can save lives can we educate and get people to be responsible we are aware of the fact that the reporting is not only to save others but also to save the communities but then in addition to that we need to build capacity in the most remote places in the world because we must have the ability to confirm it's not just to say we suspect but it's actually to confirm do we have enough capacity laboratories in the places or technologies to develop like point of care diagnostics that could be moved to the most remote places where a farmer can collect a sample and do a test and confirm whether he has a virus or a disease and then reporting the reporting mechanism can also be very important I talked about it yesterday data capturing and information sharing could be very important what platform do you use to pass information do you just say okay I have something I'm writing and passing it to the district officer the district officer passing it to the original officer and then down it takes a month to get to a point whereby the policy maker or the decision maker is going to make that decision between that time the transmission is spreading so we need to have a setup whereby if an information or if a disease is confirmed somewhere the policy maker can actually have it in the dashboard immediately and so that action can be taken also immediately maybe the ROE should also be informed immediately so let's create a system whereby globally we can have this reporting mechanism and where people can also respond quickly because they also have the information as soon as they occur Dr. Epi thank you so much for being here with us today I have the feeling that we could go on and on but you also have to go to our closing session of the scientific forum that starts now at 9 o'clock so as I mentioned our scientific forum is currently taking place check the links in the comment section so you can watch it live I will come back at 10.30 during the time for another live conversation this time with Dr. Samantha Lecholo she is a veterinarian and head of virology section at the Botswana National Veterinary Laboratory just tune in and don't forget keep an eye on our hashtag Atoms for Health and get involved in the discussion we'll see you later thank you