Professor Elmoubasher Farag

Professor Elmoubasher Farag is a senior infectious disease epidemiologist and the head of the Communicable Disease Control Programs at the Ministry of Public Health, Qatar. He is a country coordinator for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project on Zoonotic Disease Integrated Action (ZODIAC).

Professor Farag holds a PhD in Communicable Disease Surveillance and Control from the University of Gezira, Sudan and another PhD in Emerging Infectious Disease from Erasmus MC, Netherlands. Professor Farag is also a Fellow at the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Surgeon and Physicians FFPH (UK). Further, he was one of 10 international experts assigned by the WHO in 2021 to trace the origin of COVID-19.

When MERS-CoV evolved in Qatar in 2012, Professor Farag led the field investigation to identify the source of the virus and its mode of transmission. Using the One Health approach, he managed to identify the source of MERS-CoV from dromedary camels, marking the first isolation of the novel virus from the animal kingdom. His subsequent epidemiological investigations helped determine the potential risk factors and the most at-risk populations. Professor Farag’s efforts were crowned with ‘Doha Declaration on MERS-CoV and One Health’ and adopted by MERS-affected countries at the Regional workshop on MERS-CoV and One Health in 2015, Qatar.

He led the investigation in Qatar for COVID-19 cases and uncovered the first COVID-19 cluster of cases among a group of migrant workers in March 2020. Professor  Farag currently leads seven research grants on One Health. Author of over 150 publications. He serves as a scientific expert to develop both the WHO/EMRO Framework for Emerging Infectious Disease and One Health. Professor Farag’s research on “one health and emerging infections” was awarded the main prize of WHO’s Fifth meeting of the Eastern Mediterranean Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance (EMARIS) network in 2019.