Dr. John Nkengasong

speaker

208 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 9 Jul

Dr. John Nkengasong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · Amid shifting politics, can we build stable global health systems? · 9 Jul 2026 podcast

When COVID showed up in Wuhan, it took just 30 days for the whole world to be affected.

And it created serious economic harm to everybody in the world, including the United States.

So the point I'm making is that this is absolutely not the time for the United States to pull out of that leadership role in global health.

Yeah, the United States, of course, is very clear that it has pulled out of the World Health Organization, which I don't think that is a wise decision.

The dismantling of USAID was a terrible and unfortunate disaster in the fight against diseases in global health, which I will keep repeating, global health is not about helping others, it's about helping ourselves.

Absolutely.

I was born in Cameroon, and...

The education system in Cameroon at that time was very forward-leaning.

In other words, you just need to study and do well in secondary school and high school and you get a scholarship to continue studying.

But when I graduated, I just...

I wasn't sure what to do.

I wanted to do entomology because I've read somewhere that insects were affecting, can affect plants in a whole variety of way.

And I wanted to solve a problem.

I was looking for a problem to solve.

Then I abandoned that.

Then I wanted to do wildlife because I read somewhere that there was elephants and other wildlife was, and then I wanted to solve the problem.

So I was struggling with myself, and it's very typical at that age where you're still trying to define yourself.

Then I met a professor, and he said, virology is exciting, and I've never heard about virology.

So I started reading, what is virology?

And I said, oh, boy, this is something interesting, because the first thing that struck me was that there was no treatment for viral diseases.

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