Twenty months ago, the Director-General of the World Health Organization announced that the world was facing a major health emergency. An unknown virus that threatened to cause millions of deaths and put pressure on health systems, economies and the lives of millions of people.

Since then, WHO staff has been focused on providing States, national authorities, and populations with all kinds of tools and guidelines to face SARS-COV-2. Still, this is not a work that began with the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2016 the WHO has a Health Emergencies Program designed “to build the capacity of Member States to manage health emergency risks”.

In this edition, we will meet the person in charge of this Program, Dr. Mike Ryan. An epidemiologist and trauma surgeon, an expert in infectious diseases and public health, and leader of a technical team that has continuously worked on the preparation of health systems in the response against epidemics and pandemics.

A great opportunity to hear directly from this leader about his vast experience in the territory managing different outbreaks, the relationship with different social factors, the influence of the environment and nature in the generation of communicable diseases, and how the behavior of society modulates these threats.

Dr. Ryan will also tell us about his work at WHO during the current pandemic, the risks that vaccine inequality brings to societies, as well as the inability of systems to adapt quickly, generating all sort of social, economic and political disruptions.

An episode marked by a mixture of exceptional human quality, outstanding technical capacity and a clear political analysis, accompanid by a powerful sincerity that will allow us to understand in the closest way, the work that is needed to prepare the world against the next pandemic.

Welcome to El Ginebrino podcast. Episode 12: A conversation with Dr. Mike Ryan.