Gaya Manori Gamhewage MD

Dr Gamhewage has 15 years of experience in WHO including 8 years in humanitarian response capacity building, and 4 years as head of Corporate Communications and 3 years as head of risk communications. She is currently also responsible for supporting WHO Member States to build sustainable risk communications capacity as required by the International health regulations (2005), the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework and for integrating risk communication in all outbreak response work. In 2015 alone, she and her team trained 1,500 experts from 122 countries in risk communication. She also led the development of WHO’s first-ever evidence-based guideline on emergency risk communication and has published several articles on the practice of risk communication in the 21st century.

For the international response to the Ebola Virus disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa 2014-2015, Dr Gamhewage was assigned to coordinate all Ebola-related training for WHO. She leads risk communication and community engagement work at global level for WHO’s responses to Zika and Yellow Fever. She currently serves on the WHO Guideline Review Committee.