An alumnus of Princeton University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Pamela Berkowsky serves as a senior executive defense consultant with the South Florida Defense Alliance (SFDA) www.southfloridadefensealliance.org. Married to Adam Shapiro, a double board-certified physician with whom she founded Aerospace Medical Sleep Consultants, Pamela Berkowsky focuses on the defense innovation ecosystem and the national security implications of climate change. Among her particular interests are climate impacts on infectious diseases, including Ebola, and the resulting consequences for bio-warfare defense; one of the most important medical countermeasures is vaccination. The first human vaccination against the Ebola virus was approved just two years ago. Ervebo, a vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical corporation Merck & Co., Inc., was authorized by the European Union in 2019, followed by approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration later that year. During the ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, the World Health Organization had begun to use Ervebo as an investigational vaccine under a special program to mitigate the outbreak. Only around three percent of the roughly 100,000 persons who had been vaccinated up to that point developed Ebola. The EU and FDA approvals were based on these findings, as well as data from earlier trials including the ring vaccination study conducted during the catastrophic multi-year outbreak in Guinea that resulted thousands of fatalities. Most recently, the vaccine was credited with ending the 2021 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, only months after the first cluster was identified.

1. Pamela Berkowsky

2. An alumnus of Princeton University and the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Pamela Berkowsky serves as a senior executive defense
consultant with the South Florida Defense Alliance (SFDA)
www.southfloridadefensealliance.org. Married to Adam Shapiro, a double
board-certified physician with whom she founded Aerospace Medical
Sleep Consultants, Pamela Berkowsky focuses on the defense innovation
ecosystem and the national security implications of climate change.
Among her particular interests are climate impacts on infectious diseases,
including Ebola, and the resulting consequences for bio-warfare defense;
one of the most important medical countermeasures is vaccination.

3. The first human vaccination against the Ebola virus was approved just
two years ago. Ervebo, a vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical
corporation Merck & Co., Inc., was authorized by the European Union in
2019, followed by approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
later that year. During the ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of
Congo in 2019, the World Health Organization had begun to use Ervebo
as an investigational vaccine under a special program to mitigate the
outbreak. Only around three percent of the roughly 100,000 persons who
had been vaccinated up to that point developed Ebola. The EU and FDA
approvals were based on these findings, as well as data from earlier trials
including the ring vaccination study conducted during the catastrophic
multi-year outbreak in Guinea that resulted thousands of fatalities. Most
recently, the vaccine was credited with ending the 2021 Ebola outbreak in
Guinea, only months after the first cluster was identified.