Dr. Hercik is currently serving as an epidemiologist in the Global Disease Detection Operations Center (GDDOC) in the Division of Global Health Protection, Center for Global Health, at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA. She serves as the Operations Lead for the Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) Early Alerting and Reporting (EAR) Project, an international network of event-based surveillance (EBS) experts, to facilitate collaborative event characterization and rapid epidemic intelligence sharing. A major focus of her work is providing technical assistance to support implementation of EBS in Member States across the African region, including Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia among others. Through technical assessment of alert and response operations (ARO), hands-on training and linking of EBS to existing surveillance frameworks, she is committed to strengthening country capacity for early warning and response. Dr. Hercik received her PhD in Global Infectious Diseases in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Georgetown University. Her thesis research was conducted in Kilombero, Tanzania (2012-2016) and included a diagnostic and epidemiologic investigation to identify the etiologies of acute febrile illness (AFI), and to establish epidemiologic associations with infection status in order to inform disease control programming. Dr. Hercik received a post-graduate degree certificate in Designing Disease Control Programs in Developing Countries from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2012). She received her bachelor’s degrees in Global Development Studies and French Language from the University of Virginia (2011).

Dr. Tamuno-Wari Numbere is an event-based surveillance (EBS) analyst at Africa CDC’s Division of Surveillance and Disease Intelligence, where he leads the EBS team for COVID-19 response. He obtained his medical degree at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and a master’s degree in Public Health in Developing Countries from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is also a graduate of the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program. Prior to joining Africa CDC, Dr. Numbere worked for over ten years as a disease surveillance officer at the Ministry of Health in Rivers State, Nigeria, responding to outbreaks of re-emerging diseases like Ebola, Lassa fever and Monkeypox and coordinating the implementation of digital tools for disease surveillance and outbreak response.

Janaina Sallas is the national coordinator of Public Health Emergency in the Secretary of Public Health Surveillance in the Ministry of Health. She is Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Brasilia (in Brazil) and graduated in biology. She has twenty years of experience in public health, is a specialist in epidemiology from the Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) in Brazil, and Johns Hopkins University, and is currently the coordinator of the Surveillance, Alert, and Response Network to Public Health Emergencies of the Unified Health System (VIGIAR-SUS Network), within the scope of the National Epidemiological Surveillance System.

Kazim is currently a consultant at WHO-EURO and a speciality registrar in Public Health in the UK. He has a background in infectious disease epidemiology, global health and surveillance capacity building. He previously worked as an epidemiologist at Public Health England’s National Infection Service and is a graduate of the EPIET programme. He has a strong interest in Event-based surveillance having worked on a number of surveillance systems including at the Nigeria CDC.