Dr Colin Brown worked on the front line of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. He saw the devastating impact of Ebola at first hand. But small, integrated partnerships between western and local organisations, such as King’s Sierra Leone Partnership, can have a major positive impact in tackling an epidemic or other humanitarian disaster. He makes a powerful plea for the international community to be prepared for another outbreak on this scale.

Colin Brown is an Infectious Disease & Medical Microbiology clinician based in London. His main professional interests are tuberculosis, HIV, emerging and re-emerging infections, and global health education and volunteering. He is the Infectious Diseases Advisor for King’s Sierra Leone Partnership (KSLP), and was heavily involved in the clinical and public health response to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, supporting KSLP’s national and international clinical staff on the ground in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He currently works at Public Health England (PHE), where he previously spent a year working through the NHS Medical Director’s Clinical Fellows Scheme. He initially joined PHE from a Medical Research Council-funded Epidemiology Masters at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and held an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at King’s College London. For six years he was a Trustee for the Tropical Health & Education Trust.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx