Jean William (Bill) Pape

Jean William Pape, MD, is the Howard and Carol Holtzmann Professor of Clinical Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA, and the founder and Director of Les Centres GHESKIO, Haiti. Dr Pape graduated from Columbia (BS, 1971) and Cornell (MD, 1975). After training in internal medicine and infectious diseases. he joined the Cornell Faculty in 1980 and set-up the Cornell program in Haiti where he developed an effective care model for infants with diarrhea by the introduction of oral rehydration therapy and other health measures that led to a decrease in the hospital infant mortality rate from more than 40%, to less than 1% within one year. Expansion of the model nationwide resulted in a 50% decrease in national infantile mortality. In 1982, with 8 other members he established GHESKIO (Haitian Study Group on Kaposi Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections) as one of the 1st AIDS centers in the world. GHESKIO is credited with the recognition and 1st comprehensive description of AIDS in the developing world. Four decades later, GHESKIO continues as one of the largest AIDS/TB treatment, training and research centers in the Americas, providing free care to more than 500,000 patients with HIV, STls, TB, diarrheal and cardiovascular diseases annually. Dr Pape has assumed an international leadership role and has been unrelenting in his efforts to implement programs for the prevention and control of AIDS, TB and other infectious diseases in Haiti and other resource-poor countries.

Dr Pape was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by France in 2002. He is also the recipient of the Carlos Slim Health Research award, lnstitut de France's Prix Christophe Merieux, Gates Global Health and Clinton Global Citizen prizes. In 2013, Dr Pape received the WHO Stop TB Partnership Kochan Award and in 2014, Haiti's highest honors, 'Honneur et Merite, Grade Commandeur'. In 2018 he was the first recipient of the new Joan and Sandy Weill Cornell Exemplary Faculty Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (USA, 2003), of the World Health Organization (WHO) Science Council (2021) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022).