The World Health Organization Regional Office for African (WHO AFRO) wishes to warmly congratulate Dr Zabulon Yoti who is the Afro recipient of the inaugural global WHO Rewards System launched in December 2015 by WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, to celebrate excellence amongst staff.

Dr Yoti, from Uganda, with over 18 years of public health experience, works as Regional Adviser for Outbreaks and Disaster Management in the Health Security and Emergencies Cluster at WHO AFRO based in Brazzaville. In June 2014, Dr Yoti was re-assigned as part of WHO AFRO’s surge deployment for Ebola response in West Africa with the responsibility of providing technical leadership and coordination of the outbreak response. He served as Deputy WHO Country Representative to Sierra Leone from November 2014 to December 2015.

“The recognition of Dr Yoti’s contribution is not only richly deserved but also spurs on the rest of his colleagues in the African Region in general, and the Health Security and Emergencies Cluster in particular, as they continue to respond to more than 100 outbreaks each year,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.     

In June 2014, Dr. Yoti personally led WHO’s frontline Ebola response in Kailahun District where Sierra Leone detected its first Ebola Virus Disease case in an attempt to contain the outbreak at the source. Here he helped set up the first command and control coordination structure. It was also in Kailahun District that the first holding centre in Daru, the epicentre of the disease at the time, became the first treatment centre run with support from WHO and MSF. This was an unprecedented operational first for WHO during the Ebola response. Kailahun District, while it was the first to record cases in Sierra Leone, was also the first district to be free of human transmission of the Ebola virus in September 2015.

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For more information, please contact:
Ebba Kalondo, Communications Officer, Email: kalondoe [at] who.int (kalondoe[at]who[dot]int)  
Loza Mesfin Tesfaye, Communications Officer, Email: tesfayel [at] who.int (tesfayel[at]who[dot]int)  

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Below:

01 Dr Yoti at the Daru Community Health Centre in Jawei chiefdom in Kailahun district, which was the initial epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone
02 Dr Yoti at the Daru Community Health Centre
03 Dr Yoti with Souleymane Konneh, the community health officer who treated Sierra Leone’s first recorded Ebola  patient in Kissi  Teng, in Kailahun. Mr Konneh contracted the virus as a result and survived.