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Biography
Head of The Emerging Infectious Vector-borne, Tick-borne, Zoonotic Diseases and/or Air-borne Diseases Program at IRD VITROME Dakar, Senegal
Biosketch
I am a biologist, holder of a PhD Doctoral Thesis and of Animal Biology, specialty Parasitology, with over 15 years experience studying Tick-borne Relapsing Fever (TBRF) borreliosis in West and North Africa. My leadership abilities have helped to the establishment of a new map geographic distribution of Ornithodoros tick vectors and Borrelia species pathogen of TBRF from Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, with a better understanding of spatial distribution of Ornithodoros sonrai / Borrelia crocidurae, O. merionesi, O. costalis / B. merionesi and/or O. marocanus Group / B. hispanica pathogen systems in Morocco, Spain, Algeria and Tunisia. I have developed, so, in Senegalese rural areas an alternative strategy of preventive control of TBRF which allowed to reduce drastically the incidence of the disease within the community. My research activities integrated also the impact of climate change on the vectors dynamic and Borrelia species associated from Subs-Saharan Africa countries to Morocco, and had focused again on pathogenic species transmitted by hard ticks, head lice, fleas like rickettsioses, bartonellosis and/or the air-borne disease due to Coxiella burnetii. I was scientific coordinator and principal investigator in projects funded by GICC from MEDD, ANR and IRD. These investigations included in particular the study of emerging tropical infectious diseases with vectors and/or transmitted by inhalation of contaminated aerosols and the development of strategies of preventive control, by providing the supervision of Masters, PhD students and the scientific animation of the students. I am currently author and co-author of more than 65 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, a book and online scientific reports, then supervised 6 Masters/PhD students of which 4 are PhD students in Aix-Marseille University, IHU Infection Pole, France, and corrected scientific writing of others.