Elmoubashar Faag
Professor of Tropical Health, Qatar University and The Eastern Sudan College for Medical Science and Technology
he/him/his
Member of OHHELPP
Bio
Dr Elmoubasher Farag is a senior infectious disease epidemiologist and was the head of the Communicable Disease Control Programs at the Ministry of Public Health, Qatar- 2011-2024. Dr Elmoubasher Farag is a Professor in One Health and Tropical Medicine at The Eastern Sudan College for Medical Science and Technology.
Dr 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. Dr Farag is also a Fellow at the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Surgeon and Physicians FFPH (UK).
When MERS-CoV evolved in Qatar in 2012, Dr 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. Dr 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. Dr 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. Dr 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.
He was one of the 10 experts assigned by the World Health Organization to trace the origins of SARS-COVID-2 .He was selected in 2022 to join the One Health High Level Expert Panel ‘OHHLEP’ and the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origin of Emerging Infectious Diseases (SAGO). Further, He was named as the lead for the expert group to design the one-health curriculum for higher education institutions in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO). Also, he is one of the regional advisors who developed both the regional strategy for the emerging infectious diseases and the regional strategy for one-health. Currently, He is one of the co-chair of the newly established one-health center in Qatar University.