Jeremy Farrar

Sir Jeremy James Farrar (born 1 September 1961) is a British medical researcher who has served as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization since 2023.

Farrar was educated at Churcher's College and UCL Medical School, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in immunology in 1983 and a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree in 1986.

From 1996 until 2013, Farrar was Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City.

Farrar completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford in 1998 on myasthenia gravis.

Farrar's research interests are in infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue fever, typhoid fever, malaria, and H5N1 influenza.

He was Professor of Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford from 2000 until 2013.

In 2004, he and his Vietnamese colleague Tran Tinh Hien identified the re-emergence of the deadly bird flu, or H5N1, in humans.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to healthcare, especially the prevention of tropical diseases, in Vietnam.

In addition to his academic work, Farrar was part of the Center for Global Development’s Working Group on Priority-Setting Institutions for Global Health in 2012.

He was previously the director of The Wellcome Trust from 2013 to 2023 and a professor of tropical medicine at the University of Oxford.

Born in Singapore, Farrar is the youngest of six children in his family.

His father taught English and his mother was a writer and artist.

Due to his father's work, he spent his childhood in New Zealand, Cyprus and Libya.

In 2013, Farrar was appointed Director of the Wellcome Trust.

During his time at the Wellcome Trust, with Chris Whitty and Neil Ferguson, he co-authored an article in Nature titled "Infectious disease: Tough choices to reduce Ebola transmission", explaining the UK government's response to Ebola in Sierra Leone, including the proposal to build and support centres where people could self-isolate voluntarily if they suspected that they could have the disease.

In July 2015, he co-authored a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine (with Adel Mahmoud and Stanley A. Plotkin), titled "Establishing a Global Vaccine-Development Fund", that led to the founding in 2017 of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Farrar has served on a number of WHO committees, co-chairing the World Health Organization’s working group on dengue vaccines from 2015 until 2016.

Together with a number of others, in 2016 he proposed a World Serum Bank as a means of helping combat epidemics.

In addition to his role at the Wellcome Trust, Farrar has served as chair on several advisory boards for governments and global organizations.

In 2017, he was part of the selection committee chaired by Jules A. Hoffmann that chose Stewart Cole as director of the Institut Pasteur.

From 2017 until 2019, he was a member of the German Ministry of Health’s International Advisory Board on Global Health, chaired by Ilona Kickbusch.

Since its inception in 2017, Farrar has been chairing the Scientific Advisory Group of the WHO R&D Blueprint, a global strategy and preparedness plan that allows the rapid activation of research activities during epidemics.

From 2018 to 2022, he served on the joint World Bank/WHO Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), co-chaired by Elhadj As Sy and Gro Harlem Brundtland.

In 2019 he served on The Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis, co-chaired by Eric Goosby, Dean Jamison and Soumya Swaminathan.

He is also a member of the Health and Biomedical Sciences International Advisory Council (HBMS IAC) at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore.

In 2019, he co-chaired a WHO committee evaluating Ebola therapeutics.

Farrah has also served on UK governments committees.

In 2020, he was appointed to the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, co-chaired by Sheikh Hasina and Mia Mottley.

In the preparations for the Global Health Summit hosted by the European Commission and the G20 in May 2021, he was a member of the event's High Level Scientific Panel.

In May 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he was appointed to the expert advisory group for the UK Government’s Vaccine Task Force.

He has also served as a member of the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), led by Patrick Vallance (up to 2 November 2021, when Farrar resigned in disagreement with the government's approach), and Public Health England’s Serology Working Group.

During Farrar's time in SAGE, Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to have him removed from the group following his criticisms of the government's handling of Covid, the abolition of Public Health England (PHE) and the appointment of Dido Harding to head the ineffective and expensive Test and Trace programme.

In July 2021 he published the book Spike: The Virus vs The People, co-authored with Financial Times journalist Anjana Ahuja, giving his account of the UK government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On 19 February 2020, Farrar, along with 26 other scientists, published as a co-author of the Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19, which declared "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

Farrar wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian on Dec. 4, 2021 stating he feared not enough was being done to vaccinate people in poor nations against COVID-19.

Farrar stated, “The longer this virus continues to spread in largely unvaccinated populations globally, the more likely it is that a variant that can overcome our vaccines and treatments will emerge.

If that happens, we could be close to square one.

This political drift and lack of leadership is prolonging the pandemic for everyone, with governments unwilling to really address inequitable access to the vaccines, tests and treatment.

There have been wonderful speeches, warm words, but not the actions needed to ensure fair access to what we know works and would bring the pandemic to a close.”

Farrar is a member of the Royal College of Physicians and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.