Sharing experiences on the fight against COVID-19, the establishment of a global system for the rapid detection of epidemics and participating in the meeting of the board of directors of the Raoult Foundation justify the presence in France of the famous Congolese virologist Jean -Jacques Muyembe, arrived in Marseille at the invitation of the famous professor of medicine Didier Raoult.
Didier Raoult, born March 13, 1952 in Dakar (Senegal), is a French specialist in infectious diseases, professor of microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine and at the University Hospital Institute of Marseille (IHU). With his chloroquine treatment, Didier Raoult crystallized many hopes and divided a lot. Indeed, very early in the COVID-19 crisis, he announced that he had found the “miracle cure” capable of treating affected patients, despite a more than contested methodology. Result: hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of chloroquine (usually reserved for the treatment and prevention of malaria), has experienced an unprecedented craze, some scientists, politicians and citizens calling for its massive use.
Dr Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), is a Congolese virologist born in 1942. He is notably known for being one of the co-discoverers of the Ebola virus in 1976. In August 2019, a molecule that he developed with the collaboration of American researchers has been shown to be effective against the Ebola virus. In March 2020, he was appointed by President Félix Tshisekedi as coordinator of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the DRC.
