Joseph FOKAM

Joseph Fokam is a virologist, senior health scientist and Chief of Service at the Virology Laboratory at CIRCB (Chantal BIYA International Reference Centre for Research on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Management) in Yaoundé, Cameroon. He is a principal investigator and consultant on several studies including HIV surveillance survey, monitoring of antiretroviral therapy response, HIV drug resistance, mother-to-child transmission of HIV, immune-virological profile and HIV variability during adolescence, and post-immunization response to vaccine-preventable diseases.

He is an alumnus of University of Rome Tor Vergata Post-doctoral Fellowship EDCTP HIV Working group, and a Fellow of the EU-FP7 Poverty Related Disease (PRD) College where he trains the next generation of biomedical scientists.

Joseph also coordinates VIROFORUM, a platform dedicated to interpreting HIV drug resistance for the clinical management of patients. He acts as aScientific Secretary of the National HIV Drug Resistance Working Group at the Ministry of Public Health in Cameroon and is a Focal Person at the Technical Group for COVID-19 response at institutional level. In this role, he is responsible for daily molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Cameroon.

He is also a member of, WHO ResNet – HIV Drug Resistance Network and Lead of the WHO-candidate laboratory in Cameroon. Joseph is a WHO Multi-lingual Expert Laboratory Trained (MELT) Consultant on HIV, viral hepatitis, quality system and laboratory policy management.

As an Adjunct Lecturer of Medical Virology at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Yaounde I and at the School of Health Sciences of the Catholic University of Central Africa, he tutors and supervises medical students and MSc graduates in health sciences.