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.  The CIWEC Clinic also discovered the protozoal pathogen Cyclospora, and did the only treatment study.  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.  

Prof Blumberg is a specialist in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases and currently holds honorary appointments at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and the Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria (Faculty of Veterinary Science), South Africa. 

Her main areas of interest are in malaria, rabies, the viral hemorrhagic fevers, emerging zoonotic diseases and travel - related infections. She has advisory roles in a number of national, regional and international organizations including the WHO and Africa CDC.  She is the chair of the United Against Rabies Forum, a member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Rabies Advisory Group, South Africa. She is involved in formulating rabies prevention guidelines and policy for pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis. She is the co-director of the Geosentinal site in Johannesburg. 

Dr Yen-Giang Bui is a Counselor on the Executive Board of the ISTM, and the past Chair of the Professional Education Committee.

She serves on various expert committees both in Travel Health and in Immunization at the provincial and federal level in Canada. She is the 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.

She also works as a consultant to the Ministry of Health in Quebec in immunization programs.

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.