Humanitarian, Doctor, Researcher, & “Pandemic Whisperer” Source:-rsph.anu.edu.au The COVID-19 pandemic has brought epidemiologists into the spotlight as the experts we need to rely on right now. But it is the decades of experience leading up to this crisis that make their advice so valuable. Few people have more experience than ANU Alumna of the Year – Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge. “I have spent most of the last 25 years working on controlling multiple epidemics such as Ebola, Lassa fever and avian flu. I know that we can control them by meaningful partnership with communities and using evidence,” says Kamalini. Her career began as a doctor in conflict and disaster settings such as Afghanistan and South Sudan. It was these war-torn experiences that gave Kamalini insight into the challenges that not only the healthcare systems face, but the people who need them. “To really help my patients, I needed to understand the context ...
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‘Make it work on the ground’: Meet Australia’s pandemic whisperer-By Rachel Clun ANU Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge has worked hard behind the scenes on Australia’s COVID-19 response.CREDIT:ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN Source:SMH High-tech hospital wards and advanced medical treatments were not going to save Australia from the ravages of a previously unknown virus, as Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge well knew. Three basic things would be key: preventing the virus from entering the community, tracing all cases of the disease, and most importantly of all, ensuring the public understood and trusted the government’s health messaging. “In some ways it was a near miss, what happened in Australia,” Professor Lokuge said. “Like almost all developed countries Australia was very confident, given the past track record, that they could manage with technology, with therapeutic intervention: there wasn’t a [widespread] understanding that for this, the only intervention was prevention.” Kamalini Lokuge is not a household name. ...
