Senior Advisor to the Director-General, Organizational Change, World Health Organization
Bruce Aylward is the Senior Advisor on Organizational Change to the Director-General, leading the design and implementation of WHO’s Transformation Agenda. He is a physician and epidemiologist who has authored some 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, being an expert on infectious diseases. He joined the WHO in 1992 and worked in the field for seven years on national immunization programs for measles, tetanus and hepatitis in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Bruce Aylward has overseen and managed the scale-up of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative since 1998. In this period, the program expanded to operate in every country of the world and the annual budget increased to $700 million a year, increasing the staff deployed by WHO and new monovalent oral poliovirus vaccines were developed for the programme. Since 2011, Aylward has also led WHO’s work in preparedness, readiness and response to health emergencies. By developing global strategies, analyzing health trends and advising on policies and country collaboration, the WHO helps make sure that outbreaks, like the 2014 ebola epidemic, stay under control.
