ABOUT YOU : DR PLACIDE MBALA KINGEBENI
Placide
Mbala-Kingebeni, an internationally renowned Congolese physician and
virologist, is one of the leading figures in global Mpox research. He is head
of the Division of Epidemiology and Global Health and director of the Clinical
Research Centre at the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a long-standing partner institution of the
Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp.
In 2024, the
journal Nature ranked him among the ten most influential scientists in the
world, describing him as "the doctor who sounded the alarm about a deadly
Mpox epidemic poised to spread rapidly worldwide."
In 2025, Dr. Mbala was again distinguished by being included in the TIME 100 Health list, being named among the 100 most influential people in the field of health, thus confirming his scientific and health impact on an international scale.
This recognition acknowledges its crucial role in detecting a new sub-variant of the Mpox virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of its partnership with AFROSCREEN.
Thanks to in-depth genomic analyses, his team identified a more virulent strain, belonging to a new clade and mainly transmitted sexually, marking a major turning point in understanding the ongoing epidemic.
This discovery enabled the rapid alerting of national and international health authorities and contributed to the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). The results of this work were published in Nature Medicine, reinforcing the DRC's central role in thesurveillance and research of emerging diseases.
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