An Interview with Dr Margaret Harris, World Heath Organisation

WHO Global Spokesperson

Educate, Innovate, Protect 

Margaret Harris is an Australian-born public health doctor specialising in emergency risk communication during pandemics, outbreaks and other health emergencies. Dr Harris has spent much of her time working in risk communication for the World Health Organization and UNICEF, mostly in Asia, Africa and Europe, including during the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016, the Korean MERS outbreak, the global Zika virus outbreak, the COVID-19 Pandemic. During 2017 she worked with a group of expert emergency risk communicators to search for evidence supporting principles of effective risk communications and wrote the first evidence-based guidance on emergency risk communication, published in January 2018. During 2019-early 2020, Dr Harris worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, managing communications for the Ebola response in North Kivu and Ituri, spending much of that time in active conflict zones. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, Dr Harris was recalled to Geneva to act as WHO global spokesperson, her current role.