On the surface, cholera and HIV have nothing in common — one a waterborne bacterial pathogen, the other a sexually transmitted viral disease. Yet Wilfredo Matias sees common ground between the two.
“The unifying factor here is that they affect marginalized communities,” says the infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Matias was inspired to pursue a career in medicine while growing up and watching his grandfather open up the first clinic in their small town in the Dominican Republic. While his grandfather has since died, Matias’ work on infectious diseases frequently brings him back home to the Dominican Republic and nearby Haiti.
While Matias’ family connection to medicine brought him to the profession, he found his calling in infectious disease research during his first year at medical school after meeting the late global health pioneer Paul Farmer. Matias worked with Farmer’s organization, Partners in Health, to help launch a cholera vaccine in Haiti following a large outbreak on the island. The team went to Haiti to deliver vaccines and research how effective the vaccines were in the real world. “I had this moment of clarity where I was like, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’” Matias said.
In recent years more Haitian migrants have also been immigrating to the Dominican Republic, and Matias has been working with that community to understand their health concerns — particularly about HIV. People are still suffering unnecessarily from cholera and HIV, Matias says, because there’s “a failure of getting modern medicine and public health to the places where people are actually dying from these diseases.” By expanding access to medications in parts of the world where the need is greatest, he believes, that can change.
—Anil Oza
