David Nabarro

Sir David Nunes Nabarro (born 26 August 1949) is a Special Envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization. He has made his career in the international civil service, working for either the Secretary-General of the United Nations or the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Since February 2020, he has helped the DGWHO deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Nabarro is the son of the late Sir John David Nunes Nabarro, whose cousin was the late Sir Gerald Nabarro, MP. He was formerly consultant endocrinologist at University College Hospital (UCH) and Middlesex Hospital, London. He attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire, leaving in the summer of 1966. In a gap year between school and university, Nabarro was a community service volunteer. He spent a year as the organiser of Youth Action, York. A BBC television documentary was made about his volunteer work. Nabarro studied at the University of Oxford and the University of London, and qualified as a physician in 1973. He is a member of the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) and the Royal College of Physicians by distinction (where he is also a Fellow). Nabarro worked as a medical officer in North Iraq for Save the Children, before joining the United Kingdom's (UK) National Health Service (NHS) for a short time. From 1976 to 1978, Nabarro worked as District Child Health Officer in Dhankuta District, Nepal. Later, he moved to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and in 1982, he became Regional Manager for the Save the Children Fund in South Asia, based in the region. In 1985 he joined the University of Liverpool Medical School as senior lecturer in International Community Health. He moved to the Overseas Development Administration (now part of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) as a strategic adviser for health and population in East Africa, based in Nairobi, in 1989. Nabarro later took up the post of chief health and population adviser at the Overseas Development Administration (London office) in 1990, and moved on to become director of human development (as well as chief health adviser) in 1997.