John F. Vertefeuille, Ph.D., M.H.S., is the Polio Eradication Branch Chief and the Incident Manager in the CDC Polio Emergency Response and is based in Atlanta. In this capacity Dr. Vertefeuille is responsible for overall leadership and programmatic direction of CDC’s global polio activities. Since January 2017 Dr. Vertefeuille has also served as the chairman of the Eradication and Outbreak Management Group within the interagency Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
From 2011 to 2013, Dr Vertefeuille was the CDC Country Director for Haiti where he led a team of 55 and managed an annual HIV budget of approximately $90 million and a post-earthquake / cholera budget of $170 million. CDC-Haiti, in collaboration with a wide range of subject matter experts from CDC headquarters and other US government agencies, was focused on expanding access to HIV services and rebuilding the public health infrastructure following the devastating earthquake of January 2010 and the cholera outbreak that began in October of the same year. Priority areas of partnership with Haiti’s Ministry of Health were HIV, tuberculosis, cholera, vaccine preventable diseases, emergency obstetrics care, malaria, and lymphatic filariasis. In addition, health system elements such as governance, health information systems, and public health laboratory improvements were a major focus of CDC’s engagement in Haiti.
From 2008 to 2011, Dr. Vertefeuille was country director for CDC in Tanzania where he led a staff of 65 and managed a portfolio of over $138 million of United States Government global public health investments. The majority of that portfolio includes HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria activities that are implemented by CDC-Tanzania in partnership with other government agencies and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
Prior to joining the Tanzania office, Dr. Vertefeuille served as the CDC-Nigeria Country Director for three years where he oversaw the growth of the CDC program from eight people and $37 million to a 65-person $217 million country office. During his time in Nigeria, he strategically designed interventions to increase access to quality life-saving HIV services, to greatly improve laboratory diagnostics in the country, and guided the outbreak response and the diagnosis of the first human case of H5N1 avian influenza in sub-Saharan Africa.
Between 2002 and 2005 he was a Research Assistant Professor with the Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and was an adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland medical school where his focus was the epidemiology and prevention of HIV in Nigeria.
