‘a great champion of global health and health equity’ : Goats and Soda : NPR
David Nabarro, the special envoy of the World Health Organization for Covid-19’s prevention and response, was recognized for his work with the title of Knight commander of the order of St. Michael and St. George during an inauguration ceremony at the Buckingham Palace on March 3, 2023. Nabarro died on Friday at 75.
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Sir David Nunes Nabarro, doctor, international defender of public health and one of the first experts helping the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, died on Friday at 75 on Friday.
“David was a great champion of world health and health equity, and a wise and generous mentor for countless people,” wrote the director general of the OMS Tedros Ghebreyesus on the social network X. “His work has touched and had an impact on so many lives around the world.”
Nabarro, the son of a British deputy, was a trained doctor who spent his beginning of career working in Iraq, South Asia and East Africa, in various non -profit and academic positions in nutrition and infantile health.
But it is only part of his inheritance. He helped coordinate the World Health Organization Response to the Indian earthquake and tsunami In 2004. In epidemiology, he worked to contain AIDS, malaria and bird flu.
David Nabarro (before right) welcomes other members of the Corps of Special Advisers of the Secretary General in 2016.
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And he was perhaps better known for his work with the United Nations and the World Health Organization, Try to stop disease epidemics like Ebola In 2014 and finally to disseminate public health messages in the response to COVID -19 – a work that contributed to the Tarive by King Charles in 2023.
Nabarro deplored how politics had started to change the way governments reacted to the global health emergencies. In an interview with NPR in 2021Nabarro recalled how the world response coordinated to Ebola in 2014 was “incredible”. As Cavid-19 developed, he told Martinez, things had changed.
“There was a funny change between 2015, while I was working on Ebola, and 2020 to 21, working on Covid,” said Nabarro. “And that’s it – I find that world leaders are no longer apparently able to work together and to face this problem thanks to a global response.”
As the UN’s main coordinator on avian flu, David Nabarro) Center) visited a poultry market in Phnom Penh in 2006. The United Nations praised Cambodia for its fast actions to prevent the spread of the bird flu.
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In 2017, Nabarro was a finalist To direct the WHO, but came second to Tedros. Nabarro then became a special envoy for the organization, helping in particular messages to manage what was, at the beginning of 2020, a new coronavirus.
“Please take this virus very seriously,” said Nabarro to the American public in the first months of the pandemic, urging them to wear masks, keep the distance from each other and avoid going out in the event of a patient. “It is important that we recognize that this virus is dangerous and that we must all work to get out of it,” he exhorted in a Interview of June 2020 with CNN. “We frankly face an enemy.”
As the pandemic advanced, Nabarro has also become A criticism of repeated locking measures As a government’s response to recurring epidemics. Instead, he thought that national responses should focus on detection and isolation of cases. “We just couldn’t understand why so many countries saw themselves between what was sometimes called freedom and locking.” He told a journalist for Sydney Morning HeraldReflecting on the first years of the pandemic. “This is not the path. You keep your number of cases with very good monitoring, detection and isolation.”
And he was a defender of the equity of vaccines, saying at NPR in an interview in 2021 that the rich nations needed to finance vaccines for “poor countries of the world”. He said: “We are in a situation where there is still a fairly tight supply situation, and it is always a concern for us in the World Health Organization, because the only thing we want is that all the countries in the world can access a good part of the vaccine, and we are not there for the moment.”
The loss of his voice was cried by an organization called Evolution of nutritionAn international non -profit organization aimed at combating children’s malnutrition. “For David, nutrition was never only on food, it was a central element of societal change and development,” wrote the group in a declaration. “David gathered people – not only through disciplines and borders, but through ideologies – deeply believing that progress could only be made listening, learning and leading with empathy.”
Nabarro died suddenly at his house Friday evening Friday, according to A declaration of the 4SD FoundationA group he has co -founded to promote new leaders in food, nutrition and climate change. The cause of death has not been disclosed. He is survived by his wife, Flo, five children and seven grandchildren.
