First, you study the pathogen, or you study the agent then you develop preventive measures, you create a protocol for response, a protocol for self-defense, for public defense and then therapy and vaccination if it’s feasible.ĬTC: You have this extraordinary concentration of scientific knowledge at IIBR, and you and your colleagues have dedicated your lives to protecting against biological threats. So we have a lot of collaborations, including of course with universities in Israel, and the main thing we do is we develop modes of medical response. We very often have guests and good collaborations with peers from the United States peers from France, from the Louis Pasteur Institute peers from Germany, from the Robert Koch Institute and the Paul-Ehrlich Institute. We give presentations-in the last two years, certainly because of COVID, less often-but we have been giving presentations at international conferences. We have many publications in the open literature, in the best scientific literatures like Science and Nature. Therefore, we’re doing really cutting-edge research in the fields that we are interested in. A very big part of this is the exceptional percent of our people who are PhDs in four different main areas: biologists, chemists, physicists, and mathematicians. Shapira: Like in any good organization, the strength of the IIBR is the people.
We were prepared as much as we could be for such a surprising event.ĬTC: Tell us a bit more about the IIBR specifically and how that organization responded to the pandemic. We built generic capabilities to produce a vaccine and built up our diagnosis capabilities. Very soon after the start of my term, I decided that one of our main focuses should be preparedness for a potential future pandemic. There were really big, bad epidemics of cholera, pneumonia, and meningitis.Īnd so everything in my career had prepared me for this challenge. It started with tribal conflict, but then you see how the cover of civilization is thin and will break up if there is disaster. I was in a delegation in Rwanda, which was a real biological disaster. I had a lot of exposure to mass-casualty events and disasters. I felt like it was everything that I had been preparing for all my life, because I studied medicine, I had a military career, I was in the Navy. It certainly didn’t add much to my health and well-being, but it was fascinating. Obviously, the pandemic was the challenge of a lifetime, and if it had happened after my term, I would have deeply regretted it, though it was very tense, a lot of pressure. So, you have always to find the right balance. It’s very unique because it’s an academic institute but with very practical objectives. It’s an R&D institute focusing on preparedness for chemical threats and biological threats. Shapira: Like you said, last year, I finished my term as the head of this very important and unique institute. Could you explain the purpose and work of IIBR, and the degree to which the pandemic has changed mindsets about biological threats?
He is the author of The Pandemic Circus (Yediot Books, Rishon LeZion 2021).ĬTC: Between 20, you served as the Director General of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), a unit affiliated with the government of Israel that researches all areas of defense against chemical and biological threats, including the operation of national laboratories for detection and identification of such threats. He has published more than 110 articles and is the editor of Essentials of Terror Medicine, Best Practice for Medical Management of Terror Incidents and Medical Response to Terror Threats.
He is an authority on terror, trauma, emergency medicine and military medicine, and instructs medical students, physicians, EMS, medical leaders, and rescue teams on terror medicine, management of mass casualty’s events, military medicine, advanced trauma life support, and risk management.
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He is a Full Colonel (Res.) in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served as the IDF Head of Trauma Branch.
Professor Shapira previously served as Deputy Director General of the Hadassah Medical Organization and as the Director of the Hebrew University Hadassah School of Public Health. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University in Israel. He is the founder and head of the Department of Military Medicine of the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine and IDF Medical Corps. Professor Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, served as the Director General of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), Israel between 20.