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Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Health
- Irish Times
Mike Ryan: What next for the ‘Indiana Jones of epidemiology' as he leaves WHO?
If Indiana Jones had been an epidemiologist instead of an archaeologist, Hollywood might have looked no further for inspiration than the life and times of a Co Sligo man, Mike Ryan . The 60-year-old is leaving the crisis-hit World Health Organisation (WHO) after decades of fighting deadly diseases in some of the most dangerous places on earth. In January, a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the US out of the WHO, Ryan, the organisation's deputy director general, was doing what he does best. He was on his way to check out the response to an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, after giving a pep talk in Islamabad to the team trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where it remains stubbornly endemic. READ MORE WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , who visited Dublin this week, says the world is 'living in a golden age of disease elimination' and his one-time right-hand man, Ryan, has been at the forefront of that effort since he joined the organisation in 1996. Tedros paid tribute to Ryan on Friday at a press conference in WHO's Geneva HQ on the inconclusive findings of an advisory group assessing the origins of the Covid virus. 'I know that many of you value his experience and knowledge and his Irish way of saying things. WHO will not be the same without Mike but when he says I am tired and need to go then it is very difficult to keep him,' he said. Tedros with help on pronunciation from Dr Ryan managed to say: 'Go raibh mile maith agat.' 'It's been a long road,' Ryan responded. 'Eight years leading the emergencies programme and I can tell you it's a 24-hour 365 day job and it's been a great honour Tedros to lead it on your behalf and on behalf of all our wonderful staff and partners and people out there on the front lines.' His leading role in the WHO's efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic earned him a Presidential Services Award from Michael D Higgins, and he takes pleasure in the fact that Tom Howley's, his local pub in Curry, Co Sligo, displays a newspaper headline announcing that he shared the honour with Jack Charlton. Dr Mike Ryan and is team in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo The young Mike Ryan lost his merchant seaman father at the age of 11 and was raised by his mother along with his two brothers in a family that extends across the border into Co Mayo. He played GAA football up to senior level for Curry, and it's a place he loves to return to when he can. Ryan was the first in his family to go to university. While completing his studies to be a trauma surgeon, he took a job in a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, and was held hostage there by Saddam Hussein's regime during the first Gulf War. He worked to the point of exhaustion. [ How Dr Mike Ryan became a victim of 'desperate' funding crisis in WHO Opens in new window ] Before his release from Iraq, he fractured his spine in a road incident, which ended his ambition of becoming a surgeon but launched him into what became a distinguished career as an epidemiologist. 'He's the complete package,' says a long-time colleague, Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist who also leaves the WHO senior management team this month as major cutbacks get under way. Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward: 'Mike [Ryan] is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision.' Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images. 'There's no denying what a giant Mike is in global health and especially in the world of infectious diseases and emergencies. He has been on the front end of so many of these now, so competent. Mike is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision. At the same time, he's a man of the people who can lead a team in the midst of uncertainty,' adds Aylward. Only time will tell where Dr Ryan goes next. Could it be Áras an Uachtaráin? Head of the HSE? A senior UN role? A return to the WHO as a senior adviser? Or, could he lead a mooted pandemic corps of international health experts to boost preparedness for the next pandemic, possibly funded by Bill Gates? [ Dr Mike Ryan targeted by political parties for potential presidential run Opens in new window ] Could Labour or another political party recruit him as a candidate for the autumn's presidential campaign. His interest in joining the Department of Health has been sounded out, unsuccessfully, before. On the prospect of a run for the presidency, Mary Harney, the former minister for health, said: 'He's a man of enormous substance and highly rated across the globe. I think he would be a very formidable candidate. He's got a lot of street cred especially after his defence of the children of Gaza. I couldn't speak highly enough of him.' Ryan's diplomatic skills are in no doubt following the adoption by UN member states at the World Health Assembly last month of a global pandemic agreement. Following the Covid pandemic, which claimed some 20 million lives, Ryan said: 'The prospect of facing the next big pandemic without some common agreement between states seems unconscionable.' The agreement is a rare example in the current geopolitical climate of a multilateral success for the UN system. It provides a template for future pandemic response and international co-operation, though it still requires a further annex to be adopted at next year's World Health Assembly before it can be fully ratified. Mike Ryan's ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago when he conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs Exasperated by suggestions that the WHO was a 'deep state'-type agency, Ryan pointed out that the word 'lockdown' does not feature in the text and has likened the role of the WHO to that of the staff at Augusta, home of the US Masters golf tournament. 'We get to cut the greens and serve the sandwiches,' he says. Following its adoption by consensus at the World Health Assembly, Tedros paid tribute to Ryan and his deputy, Jaouad Mahjour, for their tireless support to the International Negotiating Body over the last 3½ years of discussion and drafting. This singular achievement marks Ryan out as someone with the strategic nous to help the UN reinvent itself as it faces into an existential crisis forced by UN member states demanding a reduction in the plethora of UN bodies and mandates as they follow the US example and slash development and humanitarian aid budgets. His ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago. He then conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs. It has been activated in more than 150 international outbreak responses, dramatically curtailing the spread of infectious diseases and reducing epidemic death tolls. There is a possibility that the UN may turn to Ryan as it seeks to devise a new global health architecture that will break down the silos between UN agencies providing health services to people affected by conflict and disaster. These include Unicef, the children's agency, UNHCR, the refugees agency, and the World Food Programme. Under one option outlined in a recent leaked memo from UN headquarters in New York, operational aspects of these agencies could be merged into a single humanitarian entity. At the same time, the WHO is in discussion with 12 sister agencies and global health initiatives to see how synergies and savings can be made. Ryan has a phenomenal appetite for work. As evidenced by his January visit to Pakistan, he temporarily filled the vacuum left by the untimely death last August of his good friend and colleague, ex-Irish army officer Aidan O'Leary, who was the WHO director of the global polio eradication initiative. [ Aidan O'Leary obituary: Humanitarian who led WHO's polio eradication efforts Opens in new window ] He also led the prioritisation exercise forced on the WHO by budget cuts that are likely to see a 25 per cent cut in staff numbers at its Geneva base and across regional offices, as it faces a shortfall of $1.7 billion in its running costs of $4.2 billion over the next two years. The initial reduction was top-down, reducing the senior management team from 14 to seven, and work got under way in earnest this week to cut the number of department heads from 76 to 34 before a wider cull of staff gets under way. In his parting words on Friday, Dr Tedros told Dr Ryan 'we know where to find you' in a hint that there may yet be work for him to carry out on behalf of the WHO. It was clear in Tedros's initial announcement last month that it was not easy to let him go. 'The new team has been chosen after very careful consideration, and to ensure gender balance and geographical representation,' Tedros said. 'This was, as you can imagine, an extremely difficult and painful decision for me, as it is for every manager in our organisation who is having to decide who stays and who goes.' [ World Health Organisation forges ahead as US makes its absence felt Opens in new window ] Whatever the calculation that resulted in his departure, there is little doubt the WHO has lost one of its finest advocates and best communicators, someone who reassured the world at large that professionals were in charge during the constant rounds of media briefings at the height of the pandemic. Ryan could also engage listeners when he talked about a humanitarian crisis such as the killing and starvation of Palestinians by Israel. He spoke from the heart last month when addressing the UN Geneva press corps on the horrific situation in Gaza. 'We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza because if we don't do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes.' Ryan is a man for all seasons, and it is hard to imagine we have seen or heard the last of him.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Being a Foster Dad Began to Take a Toll on Him. Days Later, He Received a Phone Call That Changed Everything (Exclusive)
Peter Mutabazi grew up in Uganda with a childhood marked by poverty He became a foster dad to help children in need, despite his initial doubts about being a single parent Mutabazi adopted his son, Anthony, who was returned to the hospital at age 11, and has since adopted two siblings, Luke and Isabella, and continues to support foster youthWhen Peter Mutabazi became a foster parent, he never anticipated that his role would evolve into something far deeper. Mutabazi's journey into foster care was driven by the intent to help, offering temporary refuge to children in need. However, his decision was also rooted in his own childhood experiences, which were shaped by poverty and hardship. "I'm from Uganda, so I grew up poor — the poorest of the poorest. No one told me to dream. No one told me to be hopeful," Mutabazi, 51, tells PEOPLE exclusively. As Mutabazi got older, things took a dramatic turn, and he decided to leave his home. He walked for miles until he arrived in the city of Kampala. Having never been outside of Uganda, the unfamiliarity was overwhelming, and Mutabazi quickly realized his only option was to survive on the streets. "As a street kid on the streets of Kampala — in any third world country — you are treated more like a stray animal," the foster dad, who goes by the name @fosterdadflipper on Instagram, says. "The way people viewed you, the way people treated you, everyone who was kind was abusive." This was until Mutabazi met a stranger whom he tried to steal from, desperate for survival. However, instead of responding with anger or punishment, the man asked for his name. The stranger's unexpected kindness sparked a transformation in Mutabazi's own life, leading to a series of events that would take him out of survival mode and open the door to a future he had never imagined. "He offered me [the opportunity] to go to school after a year and a half, [so] I went and excelled in school," he recalls. "I really began to [wonder], if a stranger can see the best in me, what can I do? So then I got a scholarship to come to [the] United States." Mutabazi's early experiences of abandonment left an undeniable mark on him, and he couldn't shake the sense of responsibility he felt for those still suffering, especially children who, like him, were trapped in a cycle of neglect and pain. Initially, he believed that in order to adopt, you had to be married and Caucasian, as he had never seen a person of color adopt children where he came from. So he began exploring the possibility of mentoring teenagers until a social worker asked if he had ever considered foster care. "For the kindness of a stranger who changed my life, I wanted to do the same for kids," he says. "I think understanding kids in foster care, unloved, unwanted, being in homes [and] in places they didn't know, I thought I could give [them] a little glimpse of hope." The initial fostering process was overwhelming for Mutabazi, as the constant cycle of children coming and going left him heartbroken. Each time a child left, the emotional toll was unbearable, and the sadness lingered long after they were gone. 'When kids go, you are left in tears,' he says. 'I was like, 'Man, this job is really hard. I don't want to do this again.' I [eventually] told the social worker that I needed a break for [at least] six months. I needed to heal.' Little did he know, just a few days later, a phone call would change everything for him. 'The kids [I was fostering] had left [on a Monday] and I received a phone call on Friday,' he explains. 'The social worker said, 'Hey, there's a kid that needs a home,' and I said, 'Absolutely not.' But the social worker [proposed] dropping off the child and picking them up on Monday, so I said yes." Mutabazi didn't want to know anything about the child or form any sort of attachment, having just witnessed the departure of 11 children. '[The boy] arrived to my home and the social worker left, so I said, 'This is your bedroom, you can call me Mr. Peter,'' he recalls. He admits he was taken aback when the kid asked if he could instead call him Mutabazi's attempt to keep his distance, something in that moment began to shift. 'This kid had been in my home for only 20 minutes,' he continues. 'So he looks at me again, and says, 'I'm 11. I was told that since I'm 11, I can choose who my father should be. So I'm choosing you.'" When the social worker arrived on Monday to pick up the boy, Mutabazi signed the paperwork, but something compelled him to ask why he had initially been left at the hospital and where he would be going next. "The social worker told me he was adopted [but] the family that adopted him dropped him [off] at the hospital, never said goodbye and never gave a reason why they didn't want him," he explains. "That's when I realized, I've always wanted to be a dad, and this kid somehow knew I [would] be his dad. How did I not see it? That's when it all clicked." Mutabazi immediately took back the papers he had signed and asked the social worker for new paperwork so the boy could attend school. While it was heartbreaking to learn that the boy's family had relinquished their parental rights, it also opened the door for the possibility of boy, Anthony, was 11 when Mutabazi took him in, and since then, they have shared in many milestones, including graduation, visiting Uganda — Mutabazi's native country — for the first time, and attending Mutabazi's younger brother's wedding.'It's one of those things that were always meant to be," he says. "Of course, there is no journey without ups and downs, you're going to have challenges [because] that's life." "At first we had to [spend] almost a year and a half without [fostering] other kids, so we can get used [to each other], but once we got there, I think he knew my heart, and [that] I always want to help other kids who are in the same position,' he adopting Anthony, Mutabazi has fostered over 30 children and adopted two siblings, Luke and Isabella. The two siblings were originally meant to stay with Mutabazi for just the summer, but after being adopted, they've now spent four years together as a family. While Mutabazi has reached many people online, where he has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, he knows his work is far from finished and still strives to help others in need. In addition to sharing his experiences as a foster dad, he also actively raises money to help foster children in need of a home on his GoFundMe page.'I didn't sleep on a mattress until I was 16, and as a street kid, I never truly belonged anywhere, and that left me feeling unwanted, unloved, and less than human," he says. "But everything began to change when I finally had a stable place to rest. That simple gift, a safe space to sleep, gave me the sense of belonging I had never known.""That's why I now do room makeovers for foster youth, many of whom have moved through 12 or more homes before they turn 18," he adds. "For the first time, we're giving them dignity. We're reminding them they are seen, valued and worthy of calling a place home." Read the original article on People
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Who is Zohran Mamdani, the dark horse in line to be NYC mayor?
Until he was five years old, Zohran Mamdani lived in a cottage on a hill above Kampala, Uganda, with a view of Lake Victoria. He now lives in a one-bedroom flat in Queens, but by the beginning of next year he is on course to move into the famed Gracie Mansion as the mayor of America's largest metropolis. Mamdani, 33, a democratic socialist, a New York state assemblyman since 2021 and before that a rapper who performed under the moniker Mr Cardamom, is now all but certain to secure the Democratic nomination for mayor after a primary that generally selects the city's next leader. 'In the words of Nelson Mandela: It always seems impossible until it is done,' he told his cheering supporters who had gathered in Long Island City, Queens. 'My friends, we have done it.'
Zawya
3 days ago
- Politics
- Zawya
Uganda: Supplementary can resolve teacher pay disparity
The Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Joel Ssenyonyi, has advised government to table a supplementary request to Parliament to address the pay disparities between science and arts teachers. He offered the advice during plenary on Tuesday, 24 June 2025, wherein he warned that arts and humanities teachers across the country had gone on strike, demanding pay equity and the matter needs to be addressed. Ssenyonyi also said that curbing public corruption would unlock the much needed funds. 'The IGG says we lose over Shs 10 trillion to corruption every year. Stop stealing taxpayers' money and there will be money to pay the teachers,' he said. Arts subject teachers began striking in early June over salary disparities, earning less than half of what their colleagues in other subjects receive. 'They are saying they are teachers too, just like the science teachers, but they have been discriminated against severely. They have warned that they are not going to carry out assessments, and that is a big concern for our young people who are in school,' Ssenyonyi said. According to available information, graduate science teachers earn Shs4 million while diploma holders earn Shs3 million. Most arts teachers meanwhile earn below Shs1 million. Teachers with similar qualifications and workloads, the leader of the Opposition noted, were being paid grossly unequal salaries, with arts teachers earning up to four times less than their science counterparts. 'We are happy science teachers got a raise. But you cannot do it for some and not others,' he argued. He further pointed to absurd situations where headteachers with arts qualifications supervise science teachers who earn more than them, calling it a 'management crisis.' He also cited the Auditor General's report for the year ending 2024, which revealed that retired science teachers receive pensions higher than the monthly net pay of currently serving arts teachers. In response, the Government Chief Whip, Hon. Denis Hamson Obua, confirmed that engagements between the education ministry and the leadership of arts teachers were ongoing. 'There is no intimidation at all, we believe in dialogue and consensus,' he assured the House. Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa who chaired the House acknowledged the urgency of the matter and asked the sector minister to update the House once negotiations conclude. The Minister of State for Higher Education, Hon. Chrysostom Muyingo, said the ministry had held a number of meetings with the teachers and that their leadership had agreed to suspend the strike. 'Government is committed to raise the salaries of all our public servants in a fair manner,' Muyingo said, promising feedback from consultations by Thursday. Meanwhile Hon. Sarah Opendi (NRM, Tororo District Woman Representative) added her voice to the debate, highlighting equally pressing concerns about pay disparities among government lawyers. 'There is a serious pay disparity among the lawyers working in the police force and other lawyers in government,' Opendi said. She warned that the discrepancy was fueling an exodus of legal officers from the Uganda Police Force to other departments, particularly the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General's Chambers, where pay is significantly higher. 'This matter was presented here. The last time, the Attorney General said they had appealed. I want to confirm, there is no active appeal,' she said. The Deputy Speaker backed her call and directed that the Attorney General update the House on the issue. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Parliament of the Republic of Uganda.
Reuters
4 days ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Uganda's long-serving President Museveni to seek reelection, official says
KAMPALA, June 24 (Reuters) - Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni will seek reelection for another term in polls due early next year to extend his nearly four-decade rule, according to a senior official from the ruling party. Although he was widely expected to run for office again, it is the first confirmation from his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. Uganda will hold its general election in January, in which voters will also elect lawmakers. Museveni, 80, has been in power since 1986 and is Africa's fourth longest-ruling leader. The ruling party has changed the constitution twice in the past to allow him to extend his rule. In a video posted late on Monday by state broadcaster UBC on social media platform X, the chairperson of the ruling party's electoral body Tanga Odoi said Museveni would pick up forms on June 28 to represent the party in the polls. "The president ... will pick (up) expression-of-interest forms for two positions, one for chairperson of the party and the other to contest if he is given chance for presidential flag bearer," Odoi said. NRM and other political parties are at present vetting and clearing their candidate for the polls. Museveni's closest opponent will be pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine who came second in the last polls in 2021 and has already confirmed his intention to run in 2026. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, rejected the 2021 results, saying his victory had been stolen through ballot stuffing, intimidation by security forces and other irregularities. Rights activists and critics have long accused Museveni of using patronage and security forces to maintain his grip on power but he has denied the accusations and says his long rule is due to popular support.
