Jeremy Farrar on fighting viruses

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In October 2013, Jeremy Farrar was appointed Director of the Wellcome Trust - UK's largest medical research funding charity. The Trust funded �750 million's worth of health-related research - about the same as the government's Medical Research Council. This means Jeremy Farrar is a major figure in British science. Since 1996, the doctor and clinical scientist had run the Wellcome-funded Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam - a British-Vietnamese collaboration specialising in infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV, TB and avian flu. He lost close friends and colleagues when the SARS pandemic took off in East Asia in 2003, and dealt with the first cases of the dangerous H5N1 bird flu when it arrived in Vietnam the following here. In conversation with Jim Al-Khalili, Dr Farrar talks about the personal and professional impact of those experiences and of his feelings of impotence as a doctor treating HIV/AIDS patients as a junior doctor in London in 1980s. With his international perspective and his hands-on experience of the deadly potential of infectious diseases, he talks to Jim about the great health challenges faced by the world in the coming decades.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?
0:06.0	What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?
0:10.0	I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.
0:16.4	Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.
0:23.0	Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.0	Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.
0:34.0	My guest today is a veteran from the front line of outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu and SARS in Southeast Asia a decade ago.
0:42.0	He's now the director of the UK's largest
0:44.7	richest biomedical research charity, The Welcome Trust. Jeremy Farrah is a clinical
0:50.7	scientist who's very possibly the only person to be awarded both an OBE by the Queen
0:56.4	and the Ho Chi Min City Medal by the Government of Vietnam.
1:00.3	For 18 years he ran the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi-Chimmon City
1:05.0	where he studied and directed research on infectious diseases ranging through malaria, TB,
1:11.1	HIV, dengue fever and avian influenza.
1:15.0	Under his direction, the unit grew from a couple of rooms
1:17.6	at the back of the hospital for tropical medicine
1:20.2	to a world-class modern research laboratory
1:22.8	employing 200 scientists and medics.
1:25.5	Then last October he returned to the UK
1:28.1	to take the helm at the Wellcome Trust as its director.
1:30.8	Jeremy, welcome to the Life Scientific. Thank you very much.
	...

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