This obituary is a part of a collection about individuals who have died within the coronavirus pandemic. Examine others right here.
Dr. David Katzenstein might have been a dreamer, “with typically good and typically barely off-the-wall concepts,” one colleague mentioned lately. However from the start, in a biosphere spawning new undetected and unconstrained killers, he was no ivory-tower researcher concerning the world by a microscope.
After medical college, he interned on the College of New Mexico, the place his work with Indigenous peoples developed into an abiding dedication to assist underserved populations forestall and take care of infectious ailments.
For 35 years, as a virologist and clinician, he not solely helped advance the prevention, prognosis and therapy of H.I.V. and AIDS; he additionally made these strategies obtainable to middle- and low-income sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Katzenstein, who was professor emeritus of infectious ailments and international well being at Stanford Medication in California, died on Jan. 25 in Harare, Zimbabwe, the place he had moved after retiring in 2016. He was 69. The trigger was Covid-19, his stepdaughter, Melissa Sanders-Self, mentioned.
“Imbued with a passionate perception in social justice, David Katzenstein had an outsized impression on the combat towards H.I.V. in sub-Saharan Africa,” Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford College medical college, mentioned in a press release,
David Allenberg Katzenstein was born on Jan. 3, 1952, in Hartford, Conn., to Henry Katzenstein, a physicist, and Constance (Allenberg) Katzenstein, a medical psychologist.
He graduated from the College of California, San Diego, with a bachelor’s diploma in biology in 1973 and acquired a medical diploma there in 1977.
He married Sharon Mayes, who died in 2007. Along with his stepdaughter, he’s survived by his sisters, Ruth Souza and Amy Harrington; his brother, Rob Katzenstein; two step-grandsons; and a step-great-granddaughter.
After his residency in San Diego, Dr. Katzenstein taught on the College of California, Davis, and the College of Minnesota till 1986.
Whereas on the College of California, the Worldwide Antiviral Society-USA mentioned, he established a relationship with the medical microbiology division on the College of Zimbabwe’s medical college and have become “one of many first U.S.-based H.I.V. researchers to decide to working on this area of the world.”
From 1987 to 1989, Dr. Katzenstein labored as a senior analysis fellow on the Meals and Drug Administration’s Heart for Biologics Analysis and Analysis.
In 1989, he joined the Stanford school as a medical assistant professor of infectious ailments and was named the affiliate medical director of Stanford’s AIDS Medical Trial Unit, which carried out analysis, together with medical trials, into antiretroviral medication that prolonged the lives of individuals with H.I.V.
He centered on the challenges posed by resistance to antiviral H.I.V. medication and was among the many first researchers to publicize the issue in Africa.
In Zimbabwe, he directed the Biomedical Analysis and Coaching Institute in Harare, the place he educated medical researchers, launched fashionable diagnostic and monitoring strategies to neighborhood well being applications and continued to publish analysis research till his loss of life.