David R. Shlim, M.D. first visited Nepal in 1979 to work as a volunteer doctor for the Himalayan Rescue Association, at an aid post at 14,000 feet.  After three stints near the base of Mt. Everest, he moved to Kathmandu in 1983 to begin what became a fifteen-year career as the Medical Director of the CIWEC Clinic Travel Medicine Center in Kathmandu, the world’s busiest destination travel medicine clinic.  The clinic pioneered diarrhea research in travelers to Asia.  Empiric self-treatment of TD was originated in Nepal to help trekkers in remote areas treat their own diarrheal illness.  During his time in Nepal, the CIWEC Clinic administered over 1000 courses of post-exposure rabies immunoprophylaxis to travelers and expatriates.

 Dr. Shlim is the author of more than fifty original research papers, more than two dozen chapters in textbooks, and is a past president of the International Society of Travel Medicine.  He was an editor of the CDC’s Yellow Book from 2007 to 2023.  He is the co-author of the rabies section in the Yellow Book. In 2023, he received the first Jay Keystone award for best educator in travel medicine.

 He is the co-author, with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, of a book on how to train in compassion entitled Medicine and Compassion.  He is also the author of an award-winning memoir entitled A Gentle Rain of Compassion.  Since 1998, he has lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he practices travel medicine.

Dr Oula Itani is an Infectious Diseases physician at the Medical Center of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, where she started working after training in travel medicine and tropical diseases. Aside from her clinical work in the travel clinic for pre-travel counselling and post-travel management, she also participates in France’s largest rabies center, where roughly 1400 patients are seen yearly for post-exposure prophylaxis.  

Dr. Yen-Giang Bui is the current Chair of the Professional Education Committee of ISTM.

She serves on various expert committees both in Travel Health and in Immunization at the provincial and federal level in Canada. She is the Vice-Chair of the Committee to Advise on Tropical Medicine and Travel, Public Health Agency of Canada, where she contributes to various working groups, and leads the working groups on yellow fever and rabies.

Dr. Bui holds a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, a Certificate in Travel Health and a Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers' Health.

She has been a consulting physician at the Department of Public Health of the Montérégie, Québec, Canada since 2001 in Infectious Diseases, and in the past has provided primary care to asylum seekers in Montreal for many years.

Dr. Bui has been directly involved in capacity building and knowledge transfer to Travel Health practitioners in Québec for the last 20 years. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, she provided support to public health practitioners, vaccinators and community organizations in her region through regular updates, and training in motivational interviewing techniques to decrease vaccine hesitancy.

Dr. Bui is a clinician at the Travel Health Clinic of the CISSS Montérégie-Centre and maintains a strong interest in post-resettlement challenges facing immigrants such as barriers to preventive care, high-risk travelers (VFRs), infectious diseases, mental health issues etc.