Dr Jeremy Farrar

Assistant Director-General Division of Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Control

Jeremy Farrar, Assistant Director-General, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and Care, leads WHO’s work on communicable and non-communicable diseases, health through the life course, health promotion and social determinants of health, nutrition and food safety, migration and health, and the impacts of the environment and climate change on health. Between 2023 and 2025 Dr Farrar was the Chief Scientist at the WHO.

Dr Farrar is a clinician scientist who was Director of the Wellcome Trust between 2013 and 2023. From 1996–2013 he was Director of the Clinical Research Unit Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. Dr Farrar trained in neurology and infectious diseases in London, Edinburgh, Oxford, San Francisco and Melbourne. He has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Oxford and has over 600 publications. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences UK, the National Academies USA, the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Dr Farrar was awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal in Viet Nam and in 2018 the President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian of the Year. He was named in the Fortune list of 50 World’s Greatest Leaders in 2015. He was knighted in the Queen’s 2018 New Year Honours for services to Global Health, received the Public Service Medal Government of Singapore 2021 and was awarded the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun and Gold Ray Neck Ribbon in 2020. In 2022 he was named in the Politico 28 Class of most influential people in Europe, and in 2024 he was named in the Time100 list of 100 most influential leaders in health.