Prior to joining WHO, Dr Farrar was Director of the Wellcome Trust. In his 9 years there, he oversaw a series of major reforms, restructuring and growth, with Wellcome now collaborating with partners around the world and focused on fundamental discovery research and three challenge areas of: infectious diseases; climate and health; and mental health, all with a commitment to ensuring that equity, diversity and inclusion are central to the science they support. Before joining Wellcome, Dr Farrar spent over 17 years as Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City in Viet Nam. His clinical and research interests have been in integrated health research across a range of infectious diseases and noncommunicable illness including emerging infections, influenza, infections of the brain, dengue, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, opportunistic infections related to HIV and stroke. Dr Farrar was the founding chair of WHO’s R&D Blueprint and the founding director of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) that led on to the work of the RECOVERY Trial and the UK COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. Dr Farrar trained in neurology and infectious diseases in London, Edinburgh and Oxford in the United Kingdom and in Melbourne in Australia. He has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in partnership with the University of California in San Francisco in the United States of America.

Dr Hajjeh is a senior public health leader with over 27 years’ experience in global health, infectious diseases epidemiology, health policy and diplomacy, and health management, especially in the Middle East Region. Dr Hajjeh is currently holding the position of the Director of Programme Management at the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office since April 2019 (i.e. deputy regional director for technical issues). Dr Hajjeh holds a Medical Doctor (M.D.) degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, and is American board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases.

Salim S. Abdool Karim, FRS is the Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and Professor of Global Health at Columbia University, New York. He is an adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, an adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He previously served as President of the South African Medical Research Council. Professor Abdool Karim is Special Advisor on pandemics to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. He is a South African clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist widely recognized for scientific contributions in AIDS and Covid-19. He serves on the Boards of the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Global Health and Lancet HIV. He is a Vice-President and Fellow of the International Science Council. He is member of the US National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

The current Minister of Health, Ximena Aguilera Sanhueza, is a Surgeon and Specialist in Public Health from the University of Chile. The authority was recently recognized internationally by The Lancet journal for its contribution to managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile and the world. She is also member of the National Pandemic Response Commission (CNRP) of the Chilean Ministry of Health. She was Director of the Center of Epidemiology and Health Policies at the Faculty of Medicine Clínica Alemana Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile. She has served as Senior Advisor for Communicable Diseases of the Pan American Health Organization, based in Washington DC (2008-2010); She was Head of the Health Planning Division of the Ministry of Health in Chile (2005-2008) and national Head of Epidemiology of the same ministry (1999-2005). She has also worked as a consultant for different international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Bank, carrying out activities in various Latin American countries and China. Among her most notable activities are: the reformulation of the national surveillance system in Chile; the implementation of the population health survey system in the Chilean Ministry of Health (Quality of Life Survey and National Health Survey, among others); having led the process of formulation and evaluation of the Health Objectives for the Decade 2000-2010 and her participation in the process of Reform of the Health Sector in Chile (2005), specifically in the strengthening of the health authority and in the conceptual design and definition of the legal mechanisms for the prioritization of diseases to be included in the Explicit Guarantees System (AUGE, currently GES). She also coordinated and led the studies for the definition of national health priorities (burden of disease, cost-effectiveness and verification of the expected cost of the AUGE package). She officially represented the Ministry of Health of Chile in the negotiation of the International Health Regulations (IHR), in the APEC health working group and participated in the team of epidemiologists of the Mission to China of the World Health Organization for the control of the SARS outbreak (2003). She was primarily responsible for Chile's preparation for the avian influenza pandemic. During her tenure at the Pan American Health Organization, she was responsible for leading and coordinating the organization's technical response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Her research interests are related to epidemiology applied to health policies and the evaluation of health services with an emphasis on inequalities and global health related to communicable diseases of poverty and the alert and response to epidemic outbreaks.

Sir Patrick Vallance is Chair of The Natural History Museum. He is a doctor and scientist and was the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) from 2018-2023. He was Chief Scientific Advisor for the climate conference COP26. Patrick was Global President of Research & Development for GlaxoSmithKline until 2018 and prior to that was Professor of Medicine and led the Division of Medicine at University College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences and Academy of Engineering and has received awards for his research as well as his scientific leadership. He had been knighted twice for contributions to science.