Researcher profile

Patrick Musole Bugeme

Patrick Musole Bugeme is a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSP). He earned his Medical Doctor degree in 2021 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical sciences from the Université Catholique de Bukavu (UCB). He has completed the Epidemiology in Public Health Practice specialization program of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU). He has also undertaken specialized training in Intermediate Epidemiology, Clinical Research and Vaccinology. He is a health worker trained in global health and health challenges in Africa from the Université Paris Cité. During his medical studies at the UCB, he was in charge of student scientific research group and played a key role in the design and conduct of student research projets. Over the past three years, Dr Bugeme has been working at the Infectious Diseases Dynamics Group of the JHBSP as a research data coordinator and the study site manager of a research project aiming to assess the effectiveness and impact of mass oral cholera vaccination campaigns on cholera incidence and transmission dynamics in Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He has taken the lead in coordinating both cholera clinical surveillance, case-control vaccine effectiveness studies, and cross-sectional households surveys. He is coordinating a 2-year cohort study measuring cholera antibody kinetics in both post-infection and post vaccination period. During a cholera mass vaccination campaign in late 2023, Dr. Bugeme coordinated the implementation of a paper-based register of over 250,000 people, which has been digitalized and is being validated for use in future vaccine studies in Uvira. Since the second semester of 2024, he is actively contributing to the Uvira Health Zone Mpox response efforts in the city, playing a significant role in case management and establishing clinical surveillance and contact tracing during the ongoing outbreak in Uvira. Dr Bugeme is also affiliated with the Center for Tropical Disease and Global Health (CTDGH) of the UCB and has recently contributed to studies on vaccine confidence and uptake in the eastern DRC, working as a co-lead study investigator on the DRC-COVID-19 Vaccine-Confidence research project. Within the CTDGH, Patrick works also on surveillance of molecular markers for artemisinin resistance in Bukavu and surrounding health zones in the South Kivu province in DRC, using both human and mosquito samples. He is also working as a volunteering physician in the pediatrics department at Uvira General Referral Hospital in Clinical and para-clinical diagnosis process. Patrick has over ten publications in peer reviewed journals both as the first author and co-author. His interests include vaccine preventable diseases, vaccine hesitancy/confidence, and global heath.