The first time I met David Sengeh, he was a college senior studying biomedical engineering. The university president asked him to introduce me at a lecture I was giving, and he charmed the crowd by talking about the ways he and I are similar (we both want people to live healthy, fulfilling lives) and how we’re different (our hairstyles). I remember being blown away by his intellect, his ambition, and his sense of humor.
我第一次见到大卫·森格时，他还是个生物医学工程专业的大四学生。我去他就读的大学演讲时，校长请他作开场介绍，他通过比较我和他的相似之处（我们都希望人们过上健康、有意义的生活），以及不同（我们的发型）吸引了在场听众。这使我对他的智慧、雄心和幽默感留下了深刻的印象。
It was clear that David had a bright future ahead of him, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted where he’d end up just a few years later: as Sierra Leone’s first chief innovation officer and youngest ever education minister.
毫无疑问，大卫有一个光明的未来，但我认为没有人能够预测到仅在几年后他就成为了塞拉利昂的首任首席创新官和该国有史以来最年轻的教育部长。
David grew up in Bo, the second largest city in Sierra Leone. His uncle was a surgeon, and David would sometimes get to sit in and observe his procedures. David remembers one time when a woman showed up for her surgery only to be turned away. His uncle explained that the hospital where he worked didn’t have an ultrasound machine, and he wasn’t comfortable performing the procedure blind. Just a few hours later, during a different procedure, the lights went out in the operating room with a patient open on the table.
大卫在塞拉利昂的第二大城市博城长大。他的叔叔是一名外科医生，大卫有时会跟着叔叔坐诊。大卫记得有一次，一位女士想做手术但被拒绝了。他叔叔解释说，他所工作的医院没有B超设备，他无法在看不到患者体内的情况下进行手术。仅仅几个小时后的另一台手术中，手术室的灯在手术进行过程中熄灭了。
That’s when he realized what he wanted to do with his life: make sure every health care worker had access to the tools they needed, “I left that day thinking it was great to be a doctor, but I wanted to do biomedical engineering,” says David. So, he went abroad to study—first at a university in Norway and then at Harvard (which is where we met).
就在那时，大卫意识到自己的毕生追求：确保每个卫生医疗工作者都能获得他们所需的设备，“那天我离开时就在想，医生是个很好的职业 ，但我更想从事生物医学工程，”大卫说。因此，他先在挪威的一所大学留学，然后去了哈佛大学（我们就是在这里认识的）。
Even though he was halfway around the world, David never stopped thinking about how to help people back home—especially the more than 27,000 Sierra Leoneans who became amputees during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1990s. Many of the disabled people he knew growing up chose not to wear prosthetics because they were painful and fit poorly. (I recently wrote about Dr. Mohamed Barrie, another hero from Sierra Leone whose career was also inspired by the same problem.)
尽管身处地球的另一端，大卫从未停止思考该如何帮助家乡人民，特别是因上世纪90年代血腥内战而被截肢的超过27,000名塞拉利昂人。大卫成长过程中认识的许多残疾人都没有选择佩戴假肢，因为戴假肢很痛且不合身。(我最近写了一篇关于穆罕默德·巴里医生的文章，他是另一位来自塞拉利昂的英雄，他的事业也受到了同一个问题的影响。)
So, David decided to spend his doctoral studies designing a more comfortable prosthetic. He ended up creating an innovative new process for fitting prosthetics. It uses an MRI to create a precise measurement of a patient’s remaining limb and a 3D printer to create a socket that fits as close to perfectly as possible.
因此，大卫决定在他博士研究期间设计一款更舒适的假肢。他最终发明了一种全新的创新性假肢佩戴技术。这一技术使用核磁共振对病人的残肢进行精确测量，之后使用3D打印制作出近可能完美适配的假肢接口。
After finishing his Ph.D. and spending some time in Nairobi studying disease data, David got a phone call that would change his life. Sierra Leone’s new president, Julius Maada Bio, wanted him to come home and serve as his country’s first ever chief innovation officer. He accepted and has been a remarkable advocate for Sierra Leone ever since. David and President Bio even joined me at our foundation’s Goalkeepers event a couple years ago to talk about their work together.
获得博士学位后，大卫在内罗毕从事了一段时间的疾病数据研究工作，随后他接到了一个改变他一生的电话。塞拉利昂的新任总统朱利叶斯·马达·比奥希望他回国担任该国有史以来首任首席创新官。大卫接受了这一任命，自此之后，他一直扮演着塞拉利昂杰出倡导者的角色。几年前，大卫和比奥总统和我一起参加了我们基金会的“目标守卫者”活动，并介绍了他们一同开展的工作。
Through his role as CIO, David is working to better integrate technology into every part of Sierra Leone’s government and support the next generation of entrepreneurs. He’s helped develop data visualization tools that local leaders can use to guide decision making. His expertise has been invaluable as Sierra Leone creates new digital tools for its citizens, like a secure electronic health records system. David is doing such a great job that, in 2019, he was asked to take on a second role as the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education.
作为首席创新官，大卫致力于将技术更好地融入塞拉利昂政府的各个部门，并为下一代企业家提供支持。他支持开发了为地方领导人提供决策建议的数据可视化工具。他的专业知识还在塞拉利昂建立全民数字工具时发挥了重要的作用。（例如数据安全的电子健康记录系统）由于大卫出色的工作，在2019年，他被委任了第二个职务，塞拉利昂基础和高中教育部部长。
Just a couple months later, the COVID-19 pandemic started. David has been deeply involved in his country’s response between his two roles.
在此之后仅几个月，新冠大流行暴发。大卫在他的两个职位上都深入参与了塞拉利昂的的疫情应对工作。
Sierra Leone didn’t see its first case of COVID-19 until the end of March 2020, but David and his government colleagues started planning as soon as it became clear the virus posed a serious threat. “We had a vision and a strategy that was informed by the numbers from around the world,” he says.
塞拉利昂直到2020年3月底才发现第一例新冠病例，但大卫和他的政府同事们在确认病毒会构成严重威胁前就开始计划。他表示："我们的预测和战略是根据世界各地的病例数而制定的。"
David believes Sierra Leone’s experience during the 2014 Ebola epidemic made them better prepared for COVID-19. He gives credit to the people of Sierra Leone for immediately understanding how important it was to get the virus under control. The population took quarantine restrictions seriously from the beginning. As a result, the country has kept case counts relatively low throughout the pandemic.
大卫认为，塞拉利昂在2014年埃博拉疫情期间的经验让他们为新冠疫情做了更好的准备。他赞扬塞拉利昂人民能够迅速理解控制病毒传播的重要性。人们从一开始就认真遵守隔离限制措施。因此，该国在整个大流行期间一直保持着相对较低的病例数。
“ David believes Sierra Leone’s experience during the 2014 Ebola epidemic made them better prepared for COVID-19. 大卫认为，塞拉利昂在2014年埃博拉疫情期间的经验让他们为新冠疫情做了更好的准备。”
Building on David’s work as CIO, Sierra Leone is using a robust data collection system to monitor COVID cases. If you start to feel ill, you can text an automated system to check your symptoms. If you need to quarantine, there’s an app you can use to make sure you receive any supplies needed to stay safe. In turn, local governments are able to use the data collected by these apps to make informed decisions about when to close things down and when to open back up.
在大卫作为首席创新官工作的基础上，塞拉利昂正在应用一个强大的数据收集系统进行新冠病例监测。如果你开始感到不适，你可以发短信给一个自动系统来检查你的症状。如果你需要隔离，有一款应用程序来确保你可以获取隔离期间所需的各种用品。另一方面，地方政府也能利用这些应用程序收集的数据，就何时封锁、何时重新开放做出有效的决策。
The country was also able to reinstate a number of programs created for the Ebola outbreak. For example, in March 2020, David and his colleagues knew that the school closures that were starting to happen around round the world would soon become necessary in Sierra Leone. So, they immediately began to rebuild the government’s radio teaching program. Some kids live in parts of the country so rural that radio signals don’t reach them, and the government arranged to have printed materials delivered to them. Kids who lived in bigger cities with internet access were able to take classes online.
该国还恢复了一些当年为应对埃博拉疫情而设立的项目。例如，在2020年3月，大卫和他的同事们知道，塞拉利昂可能很快便需要像世界其他国家一样，开始实施的学校停课的措施。因此，他们立即重启了政府的广播教学项目。一些住在偏远的农村地区孩子，无法接收到无线电信号，政府则会安排将课程资料打印出来并送到他们手中。那些住在大城市能够上网的孩子们，则可以在线上上课。
Sierra Leone’s ability to implement lessons learned from their last epidemic gives me hope. Although Ebola was devastating for the people of Sierra Leone, the country emerged stronger and better prepared for future public health crises. I’m optimistic the same will be true for the world after COVID-19. “COVID showed us that we have to use technologies that allow us to have an impact,” says David. “This is an opportunity to reset, reimagine, and rethink.”
塞拉利昂能够从上一次大流行中吸取的教训，并将其融入新的应对措施中，这让我看到了希望。虽然埃博拉疫情对塞拉利昂人民造成了十分严重的打击，但也让这个国家变得更加强大，并为未来的公共卫生危机做出了更好的准备。我乐观地认为，新冠疫情之后的世界也将会如此。“新冠向我们证明，我们必须通过应用技术手段对现实问题产生影响。”大卫说，“这是一个重新设定、重新构想和重新思考的机会。”
David Sengeh has achieved so much—and helped Sierra Leone navigate such extraordinary times—that it’s hard to believe he’s only 34 years old. I’m confident that we’ll be hearing about his amazing work for decades to come.
大卫·森格取得了如此多的成绩，帮助塞拉利昂度过了这一非比寻常的时期，而令人难以置信的是他才34岁。我相信，在未来的几十年里，我们将会不断听到他的卓越成就。
