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Head of the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases, National Institute for Communicable Diseases

Prof. Janusz T. Paweska is a head of the Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Parasictic Diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Sandrighan-Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also the deputy director of the Southern Center for Infectious Diseases Surveillance (SACIDS).
He was a researcher and senior lecturer in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences in Poland from 1982-1991, where he graduated as veterinarian and subsequently obtained his Doctor of Veterinary Sciences and Doctor habilitatus degrees. From 1991-2001 he worked at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, Onderstepoort, South Africa where from 1999 to 2001 he was the Assistant Director, Head of the Department of Virology, and a designated expert of the World Organization for Animal Health for bluetongue and African horse sickness. From 2011-2019 he was a regional director of the Global Virus Network and from 2014-2018 a head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers and Arboviruses. His special fields lie in viral diagnostics, development of novel techniques for pathogen detection and discovery, epidemiology and ecology of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers, virus-host interaction, including experimental transmission, pathogenicity and vector competence study. He has been a part of international research expeditions and responses to highly formidable outbreaks (Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley fever). During a highly fatal outbreak in Johannesburg in 2008 he led the discovery of a new arenavirus, he named Lujo virus. In 2014 he established Ebola diagnostic mobile laboratory in Sierra Leone as a part of international Ebola outbreak response in West Africa in 2014-2016. From 2001 to date he is managing the only suit biosafety level four (BSL4) facility in Africa.

Experience

  • –present
    Head of the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases , National Institute for Communicable Diseases