Joost Butenop

Dr. Joost Butenop MD, MPH (53) is an public health expert with over 20 years of experience in international humanitarian assistance and development cooperation. He spent many years in Africa and Asia. After a brief period of research on leprosy in India his career started with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for whom he worked for over 6 years, partly in projects in Afghanistan, Angola and Pakistan, and partly in the Berlin MSF office in the position of Operations Advisor, supervising projects in Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Indonesia (Aceh). From 2008 - 2014 Butenop was Technical Advisor for global health and humanitarian assistance at the Medical Mission Institute Würzburg, a non-profit advisory group humanitarian actors. He completed 17 interventions in acute emergencies in Haiti, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Turkey and Iraq. Another focus was epidemics interventions during cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Haiti. Clients were i.a. CordAid, Caritas Germany, Malteser, GIZ, KfW Development Bank or the German Red Cross. From 2015 - 2016 Joost Butenop joined KfW Development bank as a Senior Technical Advisor in Frankfurt, advising governmental development projects in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia. Joost is the founder of the innovative and internationally renowned online library MEDBOX (www.medbox.org), which is mostly known for the biggest online collection of hands-on Ebola materials (www.ebolabox.org) and cholera materials (www.cholerabox.org), amongst many other specific toolboxes. Dr. Butenop is a coveted guest lecturer in many Master courses of international health and humanitarian assistance (Bochum, Heidelberg, Berlin/Charité, Fulda and Würzburg). After the great summer of migration Joost Butenop joined the Public Health Department of the Government of Lower Frankonia in northern Bavaria as senior public health advisor for refugee and migrant health, currently a unique position within the German public health system. The position is comparable to a „Health Cluster Coordinator“, coordinating health related work in the area (both preventive and curative). Operational research is part of his job, a major focus of his work is the field of mental health, and more recently, SARS-CoV-2 prevention and control in refugee accommodations.