Dr. Richard Brennan is Director of Emergency Operations in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new Emergencies Programme. Based in Geneva, he oversees support to WHO’s response to health emergencies globally. The new programme brings together several departments in WHO to streamline the organization’s role in emergencies, from prevention and preparedness to response, and from humanitarian emergencies to disease outbreaks.
From October 2014 to January 2016, Dr. Brennan was the Director of Ebola Response at WHO headquarters. He has extensive experience in humanitarian emergencies and post-conflict settings in over 35 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. He is an emergency physician from Australia with broad clinical and public health experience. He has worked with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on humanitarian and civil-military issues. Thereafter, Dr. Brennan spent 10 years as the Health Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York, overseeing technical support to humanitarian programmes world-wide. Immediately prior to joining WHO in 2012, he spent two-and-a-half years with JSI Research and Training in Liberia, managing a large post-conflict health system reconstruction project.