Placide Mbala Kingebeni is an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa, School of Medicine. He is the Head of the Epidemiology and Global Health Division and Director of the Clinical Research Center at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Placide Mbala, a virologist committed to fighting Mpox

IRD

Placide Mbala’s involvement with the Mpox virus (formerly known as Monkeypox) began more than 15 years ago. In 2006, freshly graduated from the faculty of medicine in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo DRC), this young doctor was already attracted to the field of research. He knocked on the door of Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, an eminent Congolese virologist and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus in 1976. Their encounter was to be decisive.