Prof Harvala graduated in Medicine, obtained a MSc in Organic Chemistry and a PhD in Virology at the University of Turku, Finland. Subsequently she completed her Medical Virology training in Edinburgh and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2015. During that time, she joined the European Public Health Microbiology fellowship program at the Public Health Agency of Sweden for two years before returning back to the UK. Over the last years, she has combined her work as a Consultant Medical Virologist with clinical, transfusion and public health related virology research. She returned back to Turku in September 2024, and is now a professor of virology there.
She is a co-founder of the European Non-Polio Enterovirus Network (ENPEN) which evaluates the importance of enterovirus infections and monitors for their emergence together with collaborators from over 30 European countries. During COVID-19 pandemic, she was involved with setting up SARS-CoV-2 testing of convalescent plasma donors in England, and the related international REMAP-CAP trial. She also has wide interests in molecular epidemiology and next generation sequencing. Prof Harvala is widely published in the field of medical, transfusion and public health virology (over 140 peer reviewed publications, h-index 50). She is a president of European Society for Clinical Virology. She also chaired the WHO R&D Blueprint group on Picornaviruses and was recently appointed to the WHO European Region Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication.
Her talk will provide a global update to polio and other non-polio enterovirus infections. She will highlight the potential issues in current surveillance programs, and how these are leading to significant data gaps in our knowledge. At the end, she will discuss what the enhanced preparedness to tackle future enterovirus treats in the changing world should include.
