We Need to Save More Lives

Mike Ryan, Executive Director of The Health Emergencies Programme for the World Health Organization (WHO), is leading the team responding to the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. He tells Melissa Fleming how he had to give up on dreams of becoming a trauma surgeon, after he broke his spine in a car crash in Iraq. He was held hostage there while working in an Iraqi hospital during the first Gulf War. That experience set him on the path that led him to the WHO, with a specialism in infectious diseases. "It was very clear to me that you were either a surgeon or a good infectious disease doctor, because that seemed to be the two things a doctor could make a difference with, in many developing country environments". From SARS to Ebola to Avian Flu to Covid-19, Mike Ryan has committed his life's work to fight the spread of infectious diseases. He says "The info-demic can be just as damaging as the pandemic itself, because if people aren't getting the right information, if they're not able to trust that information, and then we have a problem. There's no point having solutions to offer people if they don't hear about them, or they don't believe in them."