Dr Christopher Maher

Christopher Maher has worked in the public health sector for more than three decades. After several years working in South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands in nutrition and immunization programmes for International NGOs and national governments, he joined the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1993, to work on immunization and polio eradication.

Mr Maher spent his first eight years in WHO working in the Western Pacific Region, based in Manila, covering more than 30 countries, rising over that time to head WHO’s immunization efforts in the Region. In late 2000, Mr Maher was transferred to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at WHO headquarters in Geneva, and served in senior operational and managerial capacities. He has been involved in polio eradication at every level from organizing vaccination campaigns and investigating cases of paralysis, through to running the technical elements of the global program, and he has been directly involved in immunization and eradication programmes in countries all over the world. He was appointed Chief Scientist and Senior Advisor to the global programme in 2012. In early 2014 Mr Maher was appointed as Director of the WHO Regional Centre for Polio Eradication and Health Emergencies (based in Amman, Jordan), managing WHO’s emergency support to countries affected by the Syria crisis, and support to polio eradication and immunization programmes for the 22 countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, including the endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the outbreak affected countries of the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

In January 2018 Mr Maher was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Australia by the Government of Australia, in recognition of his work on global polio eradication.

In July 2019, Mr Maher was appointed as Senior Adviser to the Director General of the World Health Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Since his retirement from WHO in December 2020, he remains active in international public health and emergency response issues.