Dr. Mukherjee is associate professor of medicine in the Division of Global Health Equity, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. In the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, she directs the Master of Medical Science - Global Health Delivery Program and the Program in Global Medical Education and Social Change. She teaches infectious disease, global health delivery and human rights to health professionals and students from around the world. She has helped to create new residency and fellowship training programs for Rwandan and Haitian physicians as well as global health residencies and fellowships for US trainees at Harvard and other American universities.  

Dr. Mukherjee’s scholarly work focuses on the provision of health as a human right and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.

Dr. Mukherjee is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, trained in infectious disease, internal medicine, and pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and has an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health.  Since 2000, Dr. Mukherjee has served as the chief medical officer of Partners In Health, a nonprofit focused on reducing global health disparities by strengthening health systems through public sector support and community-based programs.  She provides strategic guidance on the implementation of clinical programs at PIH’s sites in Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho, Peru, Mexico and Russia and has served as an expert consultant for the World Health Organization and Ministries of Health on of HIV, TB, health systems strengthening and health work force development.

Dr. Mukherjee also serves on the board of directors for Last Mile Health (Liberia), Village Health Works (Burundi) and Muso (Mali) and advises various grassroots organizations throughout the developing world in their work to deliver health care with a human rights based approach to the poorest of the poor.

“ It is true that Ebola is one of the scariest crisis and yet in the United States we do not need to panic” says Mukherjee as she sheds light into the medical, social and political realities around Ebola. Her extensive experience in Africa gives her a unique perspective on this very difficult epidemic.  Highlighting  the issues surrounding Ebola Mukherjee warns us that is wrong to look at it just from a medical lens. “This is not just about health This is about human dignity. This is human rights”

The first known outbreak of Ebola is in 1976 in a small town in Zaire where there were only 38 survivors. 88% died. The disease was classified as controlled since it did not spread outside that area. “ When there is a large number of deaths like this, to say the disease is controlled is terrible.”  Since a lot of the Ebola epidemics thus far have been in impoverished areas in Africa not much attention has been paid to it.  

She said the reason for the spread of Ebola in many areas is because there is no healthcare infrastructure. “When there are wars, often civil wars, like that between Liberia and Sierra Leone, funded by external sources the healthcare infrastructure is completely destroyed. Healthcare professionals leave the country and the country is left to bear the burden”

“The possible origin of Ebola has been thought of as a transmission of the virus from a bat to humans going either through eating a plum bitten by a bat or through the human contact with an animal that was infected.  However it is important to remember that this is only a theory on how this infection came to humans. It has since been spread amongst humans by touching bodily fluids of infected people”

She was extremely critical of public health messaging that gets put out in African countries by well meaning agencies who often lack complete knowledge of the culture and sometimes even about the actual disease itself. “There is a United Nations Children’s Fund poster that advises patients to avoid playing with monkeys, cook food properly and avoid eating bush meat all of which is completely irrelevant to the spreading of Ebola. Also Africans do not play with monkeys. It is a very racist comment. By telling Bush people not to eat Bush meat one is also completely unaware that this may be their main source of food.  A lack of knowledge also was shown in another instance where they said go to the health center or call the health center. In many cases there are no health centers that are prepared to help Ebola victims and the poor person may not have a cell phone. In another case there was a hospital funded by USAID , a beautiful building with no running water”

“It is important to understand the local culture and work through the locals.   Doctors without borders has done a tremendous job in handling the Ebola crisis.  One of the success stories of  containing the Ebola virus actually comes from Lagos, Nigeria where there were no deaths. We must learn from these experiences”

“Funding sources also often do not understand the nature of issues in poor and underdeveloped areas.  There was a lot of funding available for HIV . Maternal deaths however in many of these area far outnumber HIV deaths. Maternal deaths occur because there is no access to a health center or trained health care workers. The sad news is that if there is access to healthcare  these death are very preventable.”

She presents several innovative and effective approaches to providing Ebola care. For example if there is a child that is infected instead of telling the mother that she should not touch the child for it is not realistic, one should give the mother protective gear.  

With the attention on Ebola crisis, she urges people to look at the immediate needs but also look beyond to see what we can do to build healthcare systems that are local, culturally sensitive and able to provide effective care. “At Partners we used some of the funding that was for HIV and built hospitals and trained health care workers to do more than handle the immediate problem and that has brought great dividends in many areas.”

Dr. Mukherjee’s passion to make a difference in the world shines through her talks. Her holistic understanding of issues gives us confidence that under her leadership Partners in Health will have a great impact in improving the lives and health of people around the world.