Mike Ryan: What next for the ‘Indiana Jones of epidemiology' as he leaves WHO?

Irish Times

28-06-2025

If Indiana Jones had been an epidemiologist instead of an archaeologist, Hollywood might have looked no further for inspiration than the life and times of a Co Sligo man,
Mike Ryan
.
The 60-year-old is
leaving
the crisis-hit
World Health Organisation
(WHO) after decades of fighting deadly diseases in some of the most dangerous places on earth.
In January, a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the US out of the WHO, Ryan, the organisation's deputy director general, was doing what he does best.
He was on his way to check out the response to an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, after giving a pep talk in Islamabad to the team trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where it remains stubbornly endemic.
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WHO director general,
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
, who visited Dublin this week, says the world is 'living in a golden age of disease elimination' and his one-time right-hand man, Ryan, has been at the forefront of that effort since he joined the organisation in 1996.
Tedros paid tribute to Ryan on Friday at a press conference in WHO's Geneva HQ on the inconclusive findings of an advisory group assessing the origins of the Covid virus.
'I know that many of you value his experience and knowledge and his Irish way of saying things. WHO will not be the same without Mike but when he says I am tired and need to go then it is very difficult to keep him,' he said.
Tedros with help on pronunciation from Dr Ryan managed to say: 'Go raibh mile maith agat.'
'It's been a long road,' Ryan responded.
'Eight years leading the emergencies programme and I can tell you it's a 24-hour 365 day job and it's been a great honour Tedros to lead it on your behalf and on behalf of all our wonderful staff and partners and people out there on the front lines.'
His leading role in the WHO's efforts during the
Covid-19 pandemic
earned him a Presidential Services Award from Michael D Higgins, and he takes pleasure in the fact that Tom Howley's, his local pub in Curry, Co Sligo, displays a newspaper headline announcing that he shared the honour with Jack Charlton.
Dr Mike Ryan and is team in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
The young Mike Ryan lost his merchant seaman father at the age of 11 and was raised by his mother along with his two brothers in a family that extends across the border into Co Mayo. He played GAA football up to senior level for Curry, and it's a place he loves to return to when he can.
Ryan was the first in his family to go to university. While completing his studies to be a trauma surgeon, he took a job in a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, and was held hostage there by Saddam Hussein's regime during the first Gulf War. He worked to the point of exhaustion.
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How Dr Mike Ryan became a victim of 'desperate' funding crisis in WHO
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Before his release from Iraq, he fractured his spine in a road incident, which ended his ambition of becoming a surgeon but launched him into what became a distinguished career as an epidemiologist.
'He's the complete package,' says a long-time colleague, Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist who also leaves the WHO senior management team this month as major cutbacks get under way.
Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward: 'Mike [Ryan] is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision.' Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.
'There's no denying what a giant Mike is in global health and especially in the world of infectious diseases and emergencies. He has been on the front end of so many of these now, so competent. Mike is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision. At the same time, he's a man of the people who can lead a team in the midst of uncertainty,' adds Aylward.
Only time will tell where Dr Ryan goes next. Could it be Áras an Uachtaráin? Head of the HSE? A senior UN role? A return to the WHO as a senior adviser? Or, could he lead a mooted pandemic corps of international health experts to boost preparedness for the next pandemic, possibly funded by Bill Gates?
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Dr Mike Ryan targeted by political parties for potential presidential run
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Could Labour or another political party recruit him as a candidate for the autumn's presidential campaign. His interest in joining the Department of Health has been sounded out, unsuccessfully, before.
On the prospect of a run for the presidency, Mary Harney, the former minister for health, said: 'He's a man of enormous substance and highly rated across the globe. I think he would be a very formidable candidate. He's got a lot of street cred especially after his defence of the children of Gaza. I couldn't speak highly enough of him.'
Ryan's diplomatic skills are in no doubt following the adoption by UN member states at the World Health Assembly last month of a global pandemic agreement.
Following the Covid pandemic, which claimed some 20 million lives, Ryan said: 'The prospect of facing the next big pandemic without some common agreement between states seems unconscionable.'
The agreement is a rare example in the current geopolitical climate of a multilateral success for the UN system. It provides a template for future pandemic response and international co-operation, though it still requires a further annex to be adopted at next year's World Health Assembly before it can be fully ratified.
Mike Ryan's ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago when he conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs
Exasperated by suggestions that the WHO was a 'deep state'-type agency, Ryan pointed out that the word 'lockdown' does not feature in the text and has likened the role of the WHO to that of the staff at Augusta, home of the US Masters golf tournament.
'We get to cut the greens and serve the sandwiches,' he says.
Following its adoption by consensus at the World Health Assembly, Tedros paid tribute to Ryan and his deputy, Jaouad Mahjour, for their tireless support to the International Negotiating Body over the last 3½ years of discussion and drafting.
This singular achievement marks Ryan out as someone with the strategic nous to help the UN reinvent itself as it faces into an existential crisis forced by UN member states demanding a reduction in the plethora of UN bodies and mandates as they follow the US example and slash development and humanitarian aid budgets.
His ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago. He then conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs. It has been activated in more than 150 international outbreak responses, dramatically curtailing the spread of infectious diseases and reducing epidemic death tolls.
There is a possibility that the UN may turn to Ryan as it seeks to devise a new global health architecture that will break down the silos between UN agencies providing health services to people affected by conflict and disaster. These include Unicef, the children's agency, UNHCR, the refugees agency, and the World Food Programme.
Under one option outlined in a recent leaked memo from UN headquarters in New York, operational aspects of these agencies could be merged into a single humanitarian entity.
At the same time, the WHO is in discussion with 12 sister agencies and global health initiatives to see how synergies and savings can be made.
Ryan has a phenomenal appetite for work. As evidenced by his January visit to Pakistan, he temporarily filled the vacuum left by the untimely death last August of his good friend and colleague, ex-Irish army officer Aidan O'Leary, who was the WHO director of the global polio eradication initiative.
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Aidan O'Leary obituary: Humanitarian who led WHO's polio eradication efforts
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He also led the prioritisation exercise forced on the WHO by budget cuts that are likely to see a 25 per cent cut in staff numbers at its Geneva base and across regional offices, as it faces a shortfall of $1.7 billion in its running costs of $4.2 billion over the next two years.
The initial reduction was top-down, reducing the senior management team from 14 to seven, and work got under way in earnest this week to cut the number of department heads from 76 to 34 before a wider cull of staff gets under way.
In his parting words on Friday, Dr Tedros told Dr Ryan 'we know where to find you' in a hint that there may yet be work for him to carry out on behalf of the WHO.
It was clear in Tedros's initial announcement last month that it was not easy to let him go.
'The new team has been chosen after very careful consideration, and to ensure gender balance and geographical representation,' Tedros said. 'This was, as you can imagine, an extremely difficult and painful decision for me, as it is for every manager in our organisation who is having to decide who stays and who goes.'
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World Health Organisation forges ahead as US makes its absence felt
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Whatever the calculation that resulted in his departure, there is little doubt the WHO has lost one of its finest advocates and best communicators, someone who reassured the world at large that professionals were in charge during the constant rounds of media briefings at the height of the pandemic.
Ryan could also engage listeners when he talked about a humanitarian crisis such as the killing and starvation of Palestinians by Israel. He spoke from the heart last month when addressing the UN Geneva press corps on the horrific situation in Gaza.
'We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza because if we don't do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes.'
Ryan is a man for all seasons, and it is hard to imagine we have seen or heard the last of him.