Christiana Care Health System will welcome world-renowned infectious disease experts to its 50th Anniversary William J. Holloway Infectious Disease Symposium on Tuesday, May 7. Held in the John H. Ammon Medical Education Center in Christiana Hospital the symposium will mark the milestone with the theme “Holloway 50: Past, Present and Future.”
The symposium was founded in 1963 by physician William J. Holloway, M.D., founder and director of Christiana Care’s Infectious Diseases Laboratory and later principal research studies investigator in the HIV Community Program. The symposium was named in his honor after his death in 2006. Today, the symposium serves as one of the country’s preeminent forums on the topic of infectious diseases.
The 2013 symposium will feature historical reviews of some of human history’s most important diseases–smallpox, tuberculosis, legionella and HIV–and will review the history, and the controversies, in the fields of vaccinations and antibiotic usage.
Donald A. Henderson, M.D., Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh and Dean Emeritus of Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, who spearheaded the World Health Organization’s global drive to eradicate smallpox, will deliver the keynote address, “Smallpox Eradication: A Miracle or a Template for Disease Eradication.”
Other presentation topics will include “A Brief History of the Antibiotic,” “Tuberculosis Past and Future,” “HIV Care and Research: Remaining Challenges Despite Great Progress,” “The History of Legionnaires’ Disease” and “Vaccinated: The True Story of the Father of Modern Vaccines.”
Program Chair David M. Cohen, M.D., of Christiana Care’s Infectious Diseases section and HIV Community Program, said the milestone event is yet another opportunity to carry on Dr. Holloway’s legacy.
“Many of us behind this year’s symposium feel we’re personally on a mission to spread information and further education among people who need it,” Dr. Cohen said. “This is a conference to educate the heavy-lifting, hard-working medical personnel confronting these issues today. We’re helping to build an army of people who are informed, and thereby empowered, professionals who are focused on patient care.”
Planning Committee member Omar Khan, M.D., medical director of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at the Eugene du Pont Preventive Medicine & Rehabilitation Center at Christiana Care, says this year’s event will acknowledge successes and advancements in the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases while reemphasizing the continued–and in some cases greater–need for research, collaboration and continued discussion and knowledge sharing.
“Our ability to keep pace with and eventually overtake the spread of known diseases and the development of new epidemics, and to achieve objectives like the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, directly depends on exchanges of information, research, ideas and resources,” said Dr. Khan.
The sixth of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal is to “combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.” The U.N. reports that 8 million people are currently receiving “lifesaving medicine for HIV or AIDS,” and malaria deaths have fallen 25 percent since 2000. It adds, however, that “7 million people still lack access to therapy for HIV” and that 14 countries account for 80 percent of malaria deaths in the world.
