What a privilege to have collaborated with Stan Foster over the last 38 years, first through the CDC-USAID African Child Survival Initiative-Combatting Childhood Communicable Diseases (CCCD) Project. As a young Peace Corps Volunteer in Zaire (now DR Congo) working on immunization programs, I hosted Stan in East Kasai Region in 1983 for the first CCCD mid-project evaluation. He was a consummate man of the field, and his signature characteristics stood out immediately: the rumpled half-untucked shirts, wrinkled and dusty trousers, the ubiquitous little field notebooks with dogeared pages overflowing with health facility data. Though he spoke little French, Stan still commanded an audience with local officials and partners and the laughing children that seemed to follow him everywhere. Stan opened my eyes to the global health world, ever eager to teach and mentor.
Stan later visited me in Lesotho where I served as CCCD Technical Officer. The Expanded Program for Immunization Manager and staff would welcome him like visiting royalty. After that distinctive high-pitched greeting of “Hey there!” Stan would get down to business. He always started by complimenting the EPI team, but he didn’t hold back on criticism. Not everyone appreciated his frankness, and at times I had to help set things straight. No one could deny that much of his advice would be important and practical.
Stan’s technical presentations and writings were often comprehensive and concise, but not always well edited. In a draft book chapter he asked me to review, Stan had misspelled the name of the key vaccine-preventable disease that he fought throughout his life, “measels.” And an objective was to reduce childhood “morality,” not mortality. I took great pleasure in pointing out those errors.
There are few people I know who left such a remarkable legacy. Public health workers in Africa and Asia and elsewhere will mourn his passing, as I do.