| Allen Yung is a Consultant Emeritus at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He worked at Fairfield Hospital, Melbourne, for 32 years until its closure in 1996, and was Chief of Medicine for the final four years. From 1996 to November 2003 he worked as a part-time consultant in infectious diseases in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He has a lifetime interest in tropical and travel medicine, tuberculosis, and fevers of any sort. He is an honorary life member of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases, and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1998. In 1999 he and Tilman Ruff co-authored the first edition of this Manual.
Karin Leder currently holds positions as Head of Travel Medicine and Immigrant Health for the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service, and Head of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. In addition, she heads Fairfield Travel Health at RMH and is a Melbourne site co-director for the GeoSentinel surveillance network. GeoSentinel is an international network established in 1996 through the International Society of Travel Medicine and the CDC in Atlanta, with the role of monitoring the global spread of infectious diseases.
Karin trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases in Melbourne, and also undertook a combined clinical and research Fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She has a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University and a PhD in travel medicine from Monash University. Karin has studied tropical diseases in Peru, and has received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She has performed several research studies in the field of travel medicine, and has a particular interest in ‘VFR’ travellers. She has also written several journal articles addressing methodological issues associated with performing travel-related research.
Joseph Torresi is currently Head of Travel Medicine and an infectious diseases physician at Austin Health, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne. He is a Melbourne co-director for the Geo-Sentinel surveillance network. Joseph has co-ordinated several research studies through GeoSentinel, including projects investigating respiratory tract infections, vivax and other forms of malaria, and gastrointestinal infections in travellers, dengue fever in Australian travellers to South-East Asia, tuberculosis in immigrants, and travellers’ diarrhoea. He has been a principal investigator on several clinical vaccine and therapeutic trials and is a member of the v2V Dengue Steering Committee, Sanofi Pasteur.
Joseph also heads the Hepatitis Molecular Virology Laboratory at Austin Health. He has active research programs in hepatitis C vaccine development, the pathogenesis of hepatitis B and C infection, and influenza epidemiology and immunology, and has published numerous papers in hepatitis virology. He is currently funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Centre for Hepatitis and HIV Virology, Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, and the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.
Tilman Ruff works in preventive medicine in immunisation policy and programs, and the urgent public-health imperative to abolish nuclear weapons. He is Associate Professor in the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne, has served as international medical advisor to Australian Red Cross since 1996, was founding Director of Travel Medicine at Fairfield Hospital, and then Head of Travel Medicine in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at Royal Melbourne Hospital till 1998.
Tilman worked on hepatitis B control, immunisation, and maternal and child health in Indonesia between 1988-98, including on the first population-level introduction and evaluation of hepatitis B immunisation there. He has provided technical support on immunisation in Pacific island countries since 1995 through AusAID, UNICEF and WHO. From 1998 until 2003 he was inaugural regional medical director for GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, and continues to consult for various vaccine manufacturers. Tilman has undertaken research on a variety of vaccines and vaccine-related diseases, ciguatera fish poisoning, the health and environmental effects of nuclear test explosions, the use of highly-enriched uranium in the production of radioisotopes for medicine, and the health effects of nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout.
Tilman chairs the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, is International Councillor for the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia), and is Southeast Asia-Pacific vice-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Nobel Peace Prize 1985). In 2009-10 he was NGO Advisor to the Co-chairs of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. He is a member of the WHO Western Pacific Region Expert Resource Panel on Hepatitis B.
Daniel O’Brien is an infectious diseases physician working in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at Royal Melbourne Hospital and in the Geelong Infectious Diseases Service at Geelong Hospital. Daniel is also a clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne. His special interests include travel medicine, immigrant and refugee health, and mycobacterial diseases, and he is a member of the WHO drug treatment working group for Buruli ulcer. He is an active member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical humanitarian organisation, Médicins Sans Frontiéres, primarily supporting HIV and TB programs, and has worked in up to 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Mike Starr is a Paediatrician, Infectious Diseases Physician and Consultant in Emergency Medicine at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne. He’s head of the RCH Travel Clinic. He’s also the Director of Paediatric Education. He trained in Melbourne and Vancouver, and has worked and taught in Darwin and the Top End, as well as in Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia and India. His special interests include tropical and travel medicine, particularly in children and pregnant women.
Jim Black is Associate Professor in the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He holds a medical degree and a PhD in epidemiology from Monash University, and the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Master of Community Health degrees from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. His research interests include the epidemiology and control of tuberculosis in Africa, surveillance of infectious diseases, and the acquisition of infectious diseases by travellers, as well as the uses of mobile phones to improve health care in developing countries. |
