Dr. Carlos Del Rio will give a feature presentation at the Marine Hotel Association’s (MHA) Virtual Conference & Trade Show on April 22.

Dr. Del Rio, a leading global medical expert on the COVID-19 pandemic, will provide an overview of the current issues and how conditions for a safe return to global travel and cruise ship operations are shaping up.

MHA members can sign up to attend the conference with pricing starting at $250 per delegate, or $1,000 for a virtual booth.

The doctor is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and Executive Associate Dean for Emory at Grady.

He is also Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health.

He is also co-Director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and co-PI of the Emory-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit and the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evalaution Unit.

A native of Mexico where he attended medical school at Universidad La Salle, graduating in 1983, Dr. Del Rio did his Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases residencies at Emory University.

In 1989 he returned to Mexico where he was Executive Director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico (CONASIDA, the Federal agency of the Mexican Government responsible for AIDS Policy throughout Mexico), from 1992 through 1996. In November of 1996 he returned to Emory where he has been involved in patient care, teaching and research.

Dr. Del Rio was Chief of the Emory Medical Service at Grady Memorial Hospital from 2001 – 2009 and Chair of the Department of Global Health from 2009 – 2019.

Dr. Del Rio’s research has looked at the early diagnosis, access to care, engagement in care, compliance with antiretrovirals and the prevention of HIV infection.

He has worked for over a decade with hard-to-reach populations including substance users to improve outcomes of those infected with HIV and to prevent infection with those at risk. He is also interested in the translation of research findings into practice and policy.

His international work includes collaborations in the country of Georgia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Mexico, Kenya and Thailand.

He has also worked on emerging infections such as pandemic influenza and was a member of the WHO Influenza A(H1N1) Clinical Advisory Group and of the CDC Influenza A(H1N1) Task Force during the 2009 pandemic.