Karel Styblo

Karel Styblo, MD, (1921 – 13 March 1998) was born in Czechoslovakia. Internationally renowned for his work with tuberculosis (TB), he was a medical advisor to the Royal Netherlands Tuberculosis Association, and a director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) in Paris from 1979. He is known as the "father of modern TB epidemiology" and the "father of modern TB control".

Personal life

Styblo was born in Klaster, Czechoslovakia in 1921. Toward the end of World War II, he was imprisoned at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, where he contracted tuberculosis. After his recovery and release, Styblo entered Charles University in Prague. During his medical studies the tuberculosis infection acquired in Mauthausen reactivated and he was admitted and treated at Bulovka Hospital in Prague from October 1948 till April 1950. After earning his medical degree in 1950, he returned to Bulovka Hospital to become a chest physician, followed by five years of postgraduate study at the Tuberculosis Research Institute. Obituaries say Styblo studied under Sir John Crofton at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1950s; the IUATLD says Crofton and Styblo worked together in Edinburgh in the early 50s. Crofton said in an interview that they met in 1960 while Styblo was still in Czechoslovakia. Of Styblo, Crofton said: