About the event

As the global health community struggles to contain the spread of the new coronavirus – COVID-19 – there is concern about the damage an outbreak could have on a health system not as strong as the one in China. In Africa, efforts to contain an outbreak could be hindered by weak disease surveillance systems, inadequate facilities for isolating patients, weak diagnostic capacities, and a lack of protective safety equipment for health workers. Medair's Dr. Trina Helderman and Devex East Africa Correspondent Sara Jerving discuss the situation and the role NGOs can play if a widespread COVID-19 outbreak hits the continent, including lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak.

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The Speakers

Moderator

Amruta Byatnal

Associate Editor
Devex
Amruta Byatnal is an Associate Editor at Devex. She reports on global health and human rights, with a special focus on the politics of international food policy. Previously, she worked for News Deeply and The Hindu. She is a graduate of Cornell University where she studied international development.
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Sara Jerving

East Africa Correspondent
Devex
Sara Jerving is Devex's East Africa Correspondent based in Nairobi. She is a reporter and producer, whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Vice News, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Nation magazine, among others. Sara holds a master's degree in business and economic reporting from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow.

Trina Helderman

Senior Health &
Nutrition Advisor,
Global Emergency Response Team and the Democratic Republic of Congo
Medair
Trina Helderman, MD, MPH, a board-certified emergency medicine physician, completed a fellowship in international emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and received her Master’s Degree in Forced Migration and Health from Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. Helderman served with, led, or supported medical teams responding to sudden-onset disasters including the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2015 Nepal earthquake, and the Mosul Offensive in Iraq. She has led outbreak responses for kala-azar, cholera, measles, meningitis, and Hepatitis E in the complex humanitarian emergency in South Sudan; was medical coordinator with oversight for the Ebola Treatment Center during the outbreak in Sierra Leone; and has worked in public health projects in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Ghana, and Kenya. Dr. Helderman currently deploys and supports new onset emergency responses, and provides technical oversight for the ongoing Medair Ebola Response in DRC. In the past month, she has been the focal point for COVID-19 readiness within Medair.

Leslie Koo

Nutrition Team Lead
USAID Bureau for Global Health
Leslie Koo is a Nutrition Team Lead with the USAID Bureau for Global Health. She has previous advisory experience in nutrition with Save the Children International, Concern Worldwide, and UNICEF. She received her MS in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from Tufts University.

Paul Burford

Branch Chief
USAID Office of Acquisition and Assistance
Paul Burford serves as Branch Chief and Supervisory Contracting and Agreement Officer supporting the Bureau for Food Security and the President's Feed the Future initiative. He has over a decade of contracting and procurement experience across a number of USAID programs.
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