Michael J. Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist with expertise in infectious diseases and public health. Dr. Ryan serves as Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program. He has led multiple outbreak response teams to eradicate and contain the spread of many infectious diseases, such as Ebola, cholera, measles, and SARS. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Dr. Ryan leads a team responsible for treating and containing the spread of COVID-19 worldwide.
Wiki/Biography
Michael Joseph Ryan (full name) was born in 1965 (current age 55; 2020) in County Sligo, Ireland. He grew up in the town of Curry, near Tubbercury, County Sligo. Ryan’s father was a merchant sailor who worked at sea for 25 years and died when Ryan was 11 years old. Ryan received medical training at the National University of Ireland, Galway. After this, he moved to Scotland, where he received additional training in orthopaedics. Dr. Ryan received 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 communicable diseases. Later, he also participated in the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET).
Family and Race
Michael Joseph Ryan came from an Irish family in County Sligo.
Parents and siblings
His father, the late Harry Ryan, lived in Charleston and Curry. Ryan’s father grew up in Tubber Curry and moved to Charleston after his marriage. Ryan’s mother, Meta, still lives on Main Street in Charleston. Ryan’s father was a merchant mariner and operated “The Ship Inn” in Charleston with Ryan’s mother, Meta.
Relationships, Wife and Children
In 1988, Michael J. Ryan met his future wife, Mel Connolly, at Galway Medical School. After nine years of courtship, the two married in 1997. Mel Connolly is a physician and writer who specializes in infectious diseases and has also worked for the World Health Organization. Mel Connolly has also served as a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Michael J. Ryan has three children, including two daughters, Katie and Saucha.
Michael J Ryan’s wife Máire Connolly
Profession
After completing additional training in orthopaedics in Scotland, Ryan successfully applied for a surgical residency in Australia. However, his trip to Australia was delayed due to some paperwork issues, and Ryan decided to follow his then-girlfriend Mel Connolly to Iraq, where they would train Iraqi doctors in specialist surgery. Ryan arrived in Baghdad with his girlfriend Mel Connolly at the end of July 1990, and three days later on August 2, war broke out between Iraq and Kuwait, followed by a bombing campaign by the United States, in which all foreigners, including Ryan and Mel Connolly, were taken captive. During that time, Ryan worked in an Iraqi hospital where members of the ruling class often came for treatment. After returning from Iraq, he tried again to apply for a surgical residency in Australia, but was unsuccessful. He then began reading books about public health, which eventually led him to a career in this field. After obtaining a Masters in Public Health from University College Dublin and receiving special training in infectious diseases, Ryan was selected for the European Epidemiologist Training Program and was sent to Sweden to work with Giesecke. Before heading to Stockholm, Ryan had the opportunity to meet David Heymann, an American infectious disease expert at the WHO, in Geneva. At the time, David Heymann was setting up an emerging diseases program and he invited Ryan to work at the WHO. Michael J. Ryan eventually got a full-time job at the WHO. During his first days at the WHO, Dr. Ryan had the opportunity to work with many public health giants, such as the late DA Henderson. Speaking about this in an interview, Ryan said:
Sitting in a room with these people… for an epidemiologist, it’s like sitting in a room with rock stars, you know?”
At WHO, Dr. Ryan worked on numerous infectious disease outbreaks such as SARS, Ebola, cholera, avian influenza, and Marburg virus.
Michael J. Ryan (second from right) travels to the worst-hit area of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
During the SARS outbreak in 2003, Dr. Ryan led efforts to eradicate the spread of the disease. When WHO resumed its normative standard setting after the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, Ryan opposed the move and campaigned for the network he had earlier proposed; however, he was unsuccessful and left WHO in 2011. He has since joined the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and worked in several countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. In 2017, at the invitation of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Dr. Ryan returned to WHO.
Michael J Ryan and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
He served as Assistant Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response of the WHO Health Emergencies Program from 2017 to 2019. In 2019, Michael J. Ryan succeeded Peter Salama as Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ryan and American epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove regularly attended WHO press conferences.
Facts/Trivia
- As a young man, Dr Ryan often travelled to Tubbercurry to visit his grandfather, Tom Ryan, who served with the Garda (the Republic of Ireland’s national police force) in Tubbercurry in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
- Prior to working as an epidemiologist, Dr. Ryan was an orthopedic and trauma surgeon.
- He has also been Professor of International Health at University College Dublin.
- Dr. Ryan is one of the founders of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which brings together CDC, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and other nongovernmental organizations during infectious disease outbreaks or natural disasters. On the need for such a network, Dr. Ryan said:
It’s based on the principle that the capabilities are there. If we bring together all the major institutions and their skills, capabilities and expertise, we get something very special.”
- His grandmother used to run a bookstore in the town of Tubbercurry, and young Ryan would often go there to read the newly arrived National Geographic. Recalling the time he went to his grandmother’s bookstore, he found that the bookstore was filled with statues, swords, flags and souvenirs that his father collected during his travels, he said:
The room is like a TARDIS. When you walk into the room, suddenly you’re no longer in a little village in the middle of the west of Ireland, you’re in Honolulu. And you’re in Sydney and you can see pictures of the Opera House or other places from that time.”
- In 1990, during a weekend stay in Iraq, Ryan and his girlfriend Mel Connolly were on their way to a lake near the border with Kurdistan when their car was knocked off the road by a military convoy. In this accident, Ryan’s vertebrae were completely crushed. Afterwards, he had to spend several weeks immobilized. Speaking about this incident in an interview, he said:
“I could feel my toes, but I knew my back was broken. I was fighting to keep my legs while they were trying to save my life.”
- Ryan’s wife, Máire Connolly, joined WHO in 1995 and Ryan in 1996, 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 as saying:
Can’t you two be in the same place at the same time?”
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education