Michael J. Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist specializing in infectious disease and public health. Dr. Ryan holds the position of Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Program of the World Health Organization. He has led various outbreak response teams to eradicate and prevent the spread of several infectious diseases such as Ebola, cholera, measles and SARS. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ryan led the team responsible for the worldwide treatment and prevention of the spread of COVID-19.
Wiki/Biography
Michael Joseph Ryan (full name) was born in 1965 (age 55 years; as of 2020) in County Sligo, Ireland. He grew up in Currie townland near Tubbercurry in County Sligo. Ryan’s father, a merchant sailor who spent 25 years at sea, died when Ryan was eleven. Ryan did his medical training at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Subsequently, he moved to Scotland where he received additional training in orthopedics. Dr. Ryan earned a Master of Public Health from University College Dublin. At the Health Protection Agency in London, Ryan completed specialist training in communicable disease control, public health and infectious disease. Later, they also adopted the European Program for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET).
Family and ethnicity
Michael Joseph Ryan is from an Irish family from County Sligo.
parents and siblings
His father, the late Harry Ryan, lived in Charlestown and Curry. Ryan’s father grew up in Tubbercurry before moving to Charlestown; After Marriage. Ryan’s mother, Meta, still lives on Main Street, Charlestown. Ryan’s father was a merchant sailor who ran “The Ship Inn” in Charlestown with Ryan’s mother Meta.
Relationships, wife and children
In 1988, Michael J. Ryan met his future wife Máire Connolly at medical school in Galway. After dating for nine years, they got married in 1997. Máire Connolly is a doctor and author who specializes in infectious diseases and has also worked at WHO. Máire Connolly also worked as a professor at the National University of Ireland Galway. Michael J. Ryan has three children, including two daughters, Katie and Sorcha.
Mair Connolly, wife of Michael J Ryan
livelihood
After completing his additional training in orthopedics in Scotland, Ryan successfully applied for a surgical residency in Australia. However, due to some paperwork issues, his departure to Australia was delayed, and Ryan decided to go to Iraq with his then-girlfriend, Máire Connolly, where they would train Iraqi doctors in specialist procedures. In late July 1990, Ryan arrived in Baghdad with his girlfriend Mair Connolly and three days later, on 2 August, the war between Iraq and Kuwait began, followed by a US bombing campaign that killed all foreign nationals in that state. Ryan and Máire Connolly, found themselves captured. During that time, Ryan worked in a hospital in Iraq where members of the ruling class came to him for treatment. After returning from Iraq, he tried again for a surgical fellowship in Australia, but he was not successful. Later, he began reading about public health, which eventually led him to pursue a career in that field. After a master’s degree in public health from University College Dublin and specialist training in communicable diseases, Ryan was included in a training program for European epidemiologists, where he was assigned to work in Sweden with Giesecke. Before flying to Stockholm, Ryan had a chance to meet with David Heyman, an American infectious disease expert at the WHO in Geneva. At the time, David Heyman was setting up a new emerging diseases program, and he offered Ryan a job at WHO. Ultimately Michael J. Ryan got a full-time job at WHO. During his early days at WHO, Dr. Ryan had the opportunity to work with many public health luminaries such as the late DA Henderson. Talking about this in an interview, Ryan said,
Sitting in a room with those individuals… for an epidemiologist it was like having an audience with rock stars, you know?”
At WHO, Dr. Ryan worked on countless infectious disease outbreaks such as SARS, Ebola, cholera, bird flu, and Marburg.
Michael J. Ryan (second from right) travels to an Ebola hot zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
During the SARS outbreak in 2003, Dr. Ryan led the effort to end the spread of the disease. After the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, when WHO returned to its standard standard-setting, Ryan opposed the move and campaigned for a network, which he had previously proposed; However, he could not succeed and left WHO in 2011. Subsequently, he joined the global polio eradication program and worked in several countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. In 2017, Dr. Ryan returned to WHO at the invitation of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Michael J Ryan and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
From 2017 to 2019, she held the position of Assistant Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response in WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme. In 2019, Michael J. Ryan replaced Peter Salama as executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ryan, along with Maria Van Kerkhove (an American epidemiologist), regularly appeared at WHO press conferences.
Facts/General Knowledge
- In his youth, Dr. Ryan was a regular visitor to Tubbercurry; Visited his grandfather, Tom Ryan, who served in the Garda (the state police force of the Republic of Ireland) in Tubbercurry during the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
- Prior to his tenure as an epidemiologist, Dr. Ryan was an orthopedic and trauma surgeon.
- He has also served as Professor of International Health at University College Dublin.
- Dr. Ryan was one of the key members who founded the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network; A network that brings together CDC and UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders and other non-governmental organizations during an infectious disease outbreak or natural disaster. On the need for such a network, Dr. Ryan says,
It was based on the principle that the potential is there. If we put all the major institutions together and put together all their skills and capabilities and their expertise we have something special.
- His grandmother ran a book parlor in the town of Tubbercurry, where the young Ryan would often visit and read the latest copy of National Geographic. Recalling his visits to his grandmother’s parlor, which was filled with statues, swords, flags, and souvenirs collected by his father during his visits, he says,
This room was kind of like a TARDIS. The idea was that you go into this room and suddenly you’re not in this little village in the middle of the west of Ireland, you’re in Honolulu. And you were in Sydney and there were pictures of the Opera House or whatever it was at the time.
- In 1990, during his stay in Iraq, one weekend, when Ryan and his girlfriend, Maire Connolly, were driving to a lake near the border with Kurdistan, their vehicle was hit off the road by a military convoy. Many of Ryan’s vertebrae were completely crushed in the accident. After this, he had to spend several weeks immobilized. Talking about this in an interview he said,
I could feel my toes but I knew my back was fractured. As they are trying to save my life, I am trying to save my legs.
- Ryan’s wife Máire Connolly joined WHO in 1995 while Ryan joined in 1996, and on the same day that Ryan joined WHO, Máire Connolly was sent to Jakarta for six months. At the time, Connolly’s mother was quoted,
Can’t you both ever be in the same place at the same time?”
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn