Stop TB Department

Paul Nunn, Coordinator, TB Operations and Coordination (TBC)

Currently Coordinator of the WHO unit in the Stop TB Department concerned with Operations and Coordination (TBC), Paul Nunn is responsible for coordinating TB control efforts throughout the WHO system, and with partner agencies, especially the Global Fund to Fight against AIDS, TB and Malaria. He has particular responsibility for encouraging global and national efforts to rapidly assemble a sufficient response to the problem of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. Previously Coordinator for TB/HIV, anti-TB drug resistance, infection control and laboratory strengthening, Paul led the team that coordinated the global response to extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), including the organization of the Ministerial Meeting of high M/XDR-TB Burden Countries in Beijing in April, 2009. His team also wrote the WHO policies on TB infection control, new diagnostic technologies, and on collaborative TB/HIV activities, as well as a number of WHO guidelines on how to address the problem of the impact of HIV on TB. He coordinated the production of the 1st, 3rd and 4th WHO/IUATLD global anti-TB drug resistance surveillance reports. Previously, in the Global TB Programme of WHO he was Chief of TB Research and Surveillance in which he set up the Global TB Research Initiative and established the anti-TB drug resistance surveillance project.

Before joining WHO he was with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in Kenya researching the impact of HIV on TB in Nairobi, as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and as Coordinator of the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene course. He trained as a respiratory physician at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, following clinical studies at University College, London, and a degree in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University. Paul has given several plenary talks at international health symposia in recent years and was the Mitchell Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians, London in 2009. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers.