Dr. Maryline Bonnet has been elected President of Epicentre
Maryline Bonnet, a pulmonary physician by training, took her first steps in the humanitarian field during a mission in Rwanda and Burundi in 1994 with MSF, when she was still a young intern. Then, over the course of her missions in particular in Georgia, Armenia and Russia, her expertise and interests were focused on the management of tuberculosis. Faced with the lack of treatment and diagnostic tools for this infectious disease, she turned to research and joined Epicentre in 2003. As part of her PhD in public health at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, she conducted several studies on the diagnosis of tuberculosis in Kenya, which contributed to new WHO recommendations. In 2013, she joined the IRD TransVIHMI unit as a research director, assigned to the Epicentre Research Center in Mbarara, Uganda, between 2014 and 2019. During these 5 years, she will focus on studies on improving the diagnosis and screening of tuberculosis in children, simplifying the treatment of susceptible forms and the management of severe forms, especially in patients at an advanced stage of immunosuppression related to HIV infection or suffering from meningeal tuberculosis. Today, she continues her work on tuberculosis in Uganda and Cameroon from the IRD in Montpellier.
A New President for Epicentre
On September 15, 2022, Maryline Bonnet was elected by the Epicentre Board of Directors as President of the association.
“It is a great joy for me to assume this new role, says Maryline Bonnet. I am convinced that Epicentre occupies a special place in the world of research. It is one of the few organizations capable of carrying out projects in complex and unstable humanitarian situations. Its position within MSF allows it to carry out research projects in response to problems encountered by health care providers in the countries where MSF operates and to facilitate the implementation of research results for the benefit of the most vulnerable populations. In this period of climatic upheaval and economic instability, which will accentuate inequalities in access to care, we need organizations like Epicentre all the more.”
As President, Maryline Bonnet hopes to use her experience as a humanitarian doctor and researcher to help Epicentre pursue its commitments.
Photo Credit: Anca Vasiliu.
