6. Biographies
© Joo Ae-ran
Joo In-ho Korean health pioneer devoted to Africa
In November 1945, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Joo was admitted to the University of Michigan in the United States, along with Choi Chang-soon, Yoon Yu-seon and Kim Dong-chul. The four Korean scholars were sent to the United States with the obligatory condition of two years of public service upon graduation. Thus, from April 1947 to August 1950, Joo served as the Director of the Bureau of Research of the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare under the United States Military Government in Korea. From 1950 to 1955, he served in the military as a major and also as a public health adviser at the army headquarters. For 15 years, from 1969, Joo worked for WHO in the African Region. In 1970, only six months after his arrival, yellow fever broke out throughout western Africa, with about 50 000 cases reported in around 10 countries. Joo conducted epidemiological investigations and oversaw the inoculation of around 5 million people with vaccines and syringes provided by France and the United States. As a result, western Africans increased their antibody retention ratio by up to 80%.
QQ Joo In-ho
J
oo In-ho, a Korean health expert who contributed to eradicating yellow fever, smallpox and African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in Africa, was born in Hamju, Hamgyeongnam-do, in 1919. After graduating from Keijo Medical School in 1942, he worked as an assistant at the pharmacology department of the same school, while witnessing the independence of his country. As a medical doctor, he dedicated himself to epidemiological research on infectious diseases, and was the first person to isolate the Japanese encephalitis virus.
From 1972, Joo served as the Director of the Bureau of Epidemic Prevention at the WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, providing technical consultations on the eradication of smallpox in the WHO African Region. At the same time, he worked as an epidemiology professor at Uganda University. In 1976, an unidentified deadly disease broke out in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) that took the lives of 325 people, including 20 medical team members. Joo arrived first at the scene, collected blood serum, and identified the cause of the disease as the Ebola virus.
enhancement of public health services in the republic of korea in cooperation with who
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