She is not necessarily known to the general public even if we have seen and heard her during the Covid crisis: Brigitte Autran will chair the “committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks”. This new instance replaces the Health advicecreated in the spring of 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and managed until July 31 by Professor Jean-Francois Delfraissy. The immunologist is appointed chair of the committee, announces this Wednesday, August 17 a decree published in the Official newspaper. She will cbuild and lead a team of 16 scientists, of a citizen and patient representative.
Brigitte Autran, 68, is a big name, a virus specialist. Emeritus Professor of Immunology at the Sorbonne-University Faculty of Medicine, she headed the immunology department at La Pitié-Salpétrière in Paris and conducted her research at the Center for Research in Immunology and Infectious Diseases (Cimi-Paris). She is particularly recognized for having worked a large part of her career on HIV and in particular on triple therapy. She has also carried out research on cancer, and has also developed research on infectious diseases and the immunology of vaccines against influenza type viruses.
Brigitte Autran was heard during the Covid-19 crisis. She was a member of the Vaccine Strategy Orientation Council, headed by Alain Fischer, and of the former Scientific Council. She served for a long time on the Technical Committee for Vaccines (CTV) of the Ministry of Health.
From the start of the school year, Brigitte Autran will be at the head of this new health monitoring committee, described in July on franceinfo by the Minister of Health, François Braun, as “a commando team of very high-level scientists”. Brigitte Autran will have to prevent risks on all fronts: monkeypox, or “monkeypox”, and new diseases that are transmitted between humans or between animals and humans. But also anything that is likely to pollute the environment or food.
Despite everything, her priority remains the fight against Covid-19, which she considers to be “almost certain that there will be a wave in the fall” and warns : “Today, we have to move towards living with it”. She regrets the too many people who are not vaccinated or who have not done all their reminders and campaigns for the treatments to be better known and more prescribed. The immunologist also welcomes the arrival of new versions of vaccines adapted to the variants.
On another front, the new president of the health monitoring committee thinks that the objective “zero monkeypox“, in other words, putting an end to monkeypox, is achievable. To do this, she recommends intensifying the vaccination campaign, in particular by opening more centers for the 250,000 eligible people. For the moment only 35,000 have been vaccinated against monkeypox at 150 vaccination centres.