About Cornelia E Davis
Dr. Cornelia E. Davis, better known as Connie, is an author, speaker, renowned epidemiologist and disease detective. She was sent by the World Health Organization (WHO) to Ethiopia in 1990 to help African Ministries of Health prevent or control outbreaks of meningococcal meningitis. While working in Addis Ababa, she was caught up in the fast-moving civil war and stayed behind as Acting Director of the WHO EPR Centre when UN staff were evacuated. A series of events led her to a three-month-old infant found on the steps of St. George’s Cathedral. She described this exciting adventure in her new memoir, Three Years in Ethiopia.
Connie was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended Gonzaga University, and was one of the first black women admitted to the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (1968). After finishing a pediatric residency, she was hired by WHO to work in the Smallpox Eradication Program in India (1975-77). This highly successful program changed her medical focus and inspired her first book, Searching for Sitala Mata: Eradicating Smallpox in India.
Connie earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and went on to work in the EIS (Epidemic Intelligence Service) at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. For the next 30 years, she battled disease outbreaks in Africa and Asia for WHO and USAID. An intrepid world traveler, she has worked in or traveled to 97 countries and territories. She lives on the northern shores of Lake Chapala near Guadalajara, Mexico.
