Gerda Annika Linde (born 26 February 1948) is a Swedish physician, virologist and retired civil servant. From 2005 to 2013 she served as State Epidemiologist at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control.

Biography

Linde was born in

Skövde Skövde () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and urban centre in Skövde Municipality and Västra Götaland County, in the Västergötland, Västergötland (Western Gothland region) in central southern Sweden. Skövde is situated around 150 k ...

and grew up there. She was inspired by the novel ''

Exodus Exodus or the Exodus may refer to: Religion * Book of Exodus, second book of the Hebrew Torah and the Christian Bible * The Exodus, the biblical story of the migration of the ancient Israelites from Egypt into Canaan Historical events * Ex ...

'' by

Leon Uris Leon Marcus Uris (August 3, 1924 – June 21, 2003) was an American author of historical fiction who wrote many bestselling books, including '' Exodus'' (published in 1958) and ''Trinity'' (published in 1976). Uris was a co-founder of the Write ...

to study medicine. She enrolled at University of Gothenburg in 1968, studying medicine and sociology, obtaining a medical degree in 1974. After her internship at

Danderyd Hospital Danderyd Hospital () is a teaching hospital in Danderyd Municipality in northern Greater Stockholm opened in 1922. Until 1964 it was called ''Centrallasarettet i Stocksund''. Danderyd Hospital is one of Sweden's largest emergency hospitals and pr ...

she went on to work as an infectious disease specialist at the presently defunct

Roslagstull Hospital Roslagstull Hospital ( Swedish: Roslagstulls sjukhus) is a former isolation hospital in Stockholm, situated in the Royal National City Park close to Roslagstull in the northern part of the inner city. The hospital was founded in 1893 as Stockho ...

in Stockholm. In 1979 she started working at the virological department at the Swedish National Bacteriological Laboratory, and completed her PhD in Clinical Virology in 1987. In 1993 she became head of the Swedish influenza centre of the WHO and started working for Department of Virology at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control, where she in 2002 became department head. In 2005 she became head of the Department of Epidemiology and was in the same year appointed State Epidemiologist. She served in this role until her retirement in 2013, when she was succeeded by

Anders Tegnell Nils Anders Tegnell (born 17 April 1956) is a Swedish civil servant and physician specialising in infectious disease. From 2013 until his resignation in March 2022 he was Sweden's state epidemiologist. Tegnell had key roles in the Swedish resp ...

. Linde's research is mainly focused on adapting basic research results to clinical applications. She has researched the reaction of the human body to different types of viruses and evaluation of diagnostic methods. She mainly focused on herpes viruses to begin with, but eventually came to focus her work mostly on

influenza Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...

and respiratory viruses. She has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Linde has served as

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, but the term is gen ...

at the

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; ; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden and one of the foremost medical research institutes globally ...

. She hosted an episode of the popular radio show ''

Sommar i P1 ''Sommar i P1'' () is one of the most popular shows on Swedish radio. It has been broadcast every summer since 29June 1959, originally as ''Sommar'' on P3 and since 1993 on P1. About Each 90-minute-long programme in the series – which is ...

'' for

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio Aktiebolag, AB (; "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio programming, radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a television ...

in 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Linde, Annika Swedish epidemiologists Swedish virologists 1948 births Living people People from Skövde Swedish civil servants Swedish women civil servants Academic staff of the Karolinska Institute Swedish women radio presenters Swedish radio presenters 21st-century Swedish women physicians 21st-century Swedish physicians