# Pumphandle Lecture

The Pumphandle Lecture, established in 1993, is an annual lecture held around September to celebrate the removal of the Broad Street pump handle that took place in September 1854 during the cholera epidemic in Soho. It is organised by the John Snow Society, named for John Snow, and takes place at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Following the lecture the speaker performs a ceremonial removal and replacement of the pump handle and members proceed to the John Snow pub.

## History

The Pumphandle Lecture was established in 1993 by the John Snow Society, named for John Snow, to celebrate the removal of the Broad Street pump handle that took place in September 1854 during the cholera epidemic in Soho. It is held every year around September.
The inaugural lecture was delivered by Nick Ward and chaired by Paul Fine.

## Lectures

List of speakers :
| Year | Speaker | Nationality | Title |
| 1993 | Nick Ward | United Kingdom | "Global Polio Eradication – a call for action" |
| 1994 | Spence Galbraith | United Kingdom | "Dr John Snow – Early Life and Later Triumphs" |
| 1995 | Sandy Cairncross | United Kingdom | "Turning the Worm – The Guinea Worm eradication programme" |
| 1996 | Richard Feachem | United Kingdom  United States | "Would John Snow have joined the world bank?" |
| 1997 | Hugh Pennington | United Kingdom | "E. coli in Scotland – the relevance of John Snow and William Whewell’s consilience of induction" |
| 1998 | Richard J. Evans | United Kingdom | "Koch, Pettenkofer and the search for the cause of cholera" |
| 1999 | Chris Bartlett | United Kingdom | "Removing the pump handle at an international level" |
| 2000 | John Oxford | United Kingdom | "The search for permafrost and other victims of the 1918 Influenza" |
| 2001 | David Bradley | | "John Snow in the world of today" |
| 2002 | David Salisbury | | "Managing vaccine adverse effects" |
| 2003 | Mike Ryan | Ireland | "Epidemics in the 21st Century, the lesson of SARS" |
| 2004 | Alain Moren | | "Challenges for field epidemiology training in a widening Europe" |
| 2005 | Tore Godal | | "Everything is Impossible until it has been done" |
| 2006 | Jamie Bartram | United Kingdom | "Drinking Water - Where Science Meets Policy" |
| 2007 | Donald Henderson | United States | "Polio Eradication, a reconsideration of strategy" |
| 2008 | Patrick Wall | Ireland | "Food Safety – Media based or Risk Based controls?" |
| 2009 | David L. Heymann | United States | "When Nature turns cook – The epidemiologist’s feast" |
| 2010 | David Nabarro | United Kingdom | "Sapiens, Synergy, Solidarite, Success" |
| 2011 | Hans Rosling | Sweden | "Epidemiology for the Bottom Billion – where there is not even a pump handle to remove!" |
| 2012 | Tom Frieden | United States | "What pump handles need to be removed to save the most lives in this century? |
| 2013 | Julie Cliff | Australia | "From London to Mozambique, from cholera to konzo" |
| 2014 | Jeremy Farrar | United Kingdom | "Medicine and public health: divorced for too long" |
| 2015 | Atul Gawande | United States | "On removing the pumphandle: innovation and implementation" |
| 2016 | Paul B. Spiegel | Canada | "The Syrian conflict and its effect on the future of humanitarian response: We need a new pumphandle" |
| 2017 | Richard Horton | United Kingdom | "Life and Death in 2100: Health, History and Human Contingency" |
| 2018 | Joanne Liu | Canada | "The Cost of Fear: Humanitarian Crises in the Age of Anxiety" |
| 2019 | Eliza Manningham-Buller | United Kingdom | "Promoting Medical Science in an Age of Scepticism" |
| 2020 | John Nkengasong | Cameroon  United States | "Africa CDC: A New Public Health Order" |
| 2021 | Anthony Fauci | United States | "COVID-19: Lessons Learned and Remaining Challenges" |
| 2022 | Andrew Haines | United Kingdom | "The imperative of climate action for health" |
| 2023 | Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | Nigeria  United States | "Global health equity and the role of trade" |
| 2024 | Soumya Swaminathan | India | “Pandemics, Climate Change and the Role of Science” |