Many young people start out wanting to make a difference. Sir David Nabarro, who has died aged 75, was unusual in recognising early on the power of synergy. Aged 17, he was the subject of a 1967 BBC documentary on volunteering when he spent a year as organiser of Youth Action, leading a group of 400 volunteers in York, between leaving Oundle public school and going to Oxford University to study medicine. That experience – coordinating efforts for maximum impact – presaged a life in public service spent urging, cajoling and commanding others to work together.
After stints as a medical officer in Iraq and Nepal, and as a health and population adviser in Kenya, he joined the World Health Organization, and subsequently the UN, leading the responses to the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the 2016 cholera outbreak in Haiti.
But it was as the WHO’s special envoy for Covid-19, one of six appointed by the director general, that Nabarro became best known in the UK. He described the pandemic as a “health crisis unlike anything we have encountered in my professional experience”. He was early to advocate the use of masks and testing, tracing and isolating infected individuals, but courted controversy with his remarks on lockdowns – which he said were misquoted. He argued that lockdowns should be used as “circuit breakers”, as a reserve measure to temporarily slow the spread of the virus, buying time and allowing the NHS and similar institutions to reorganise, regroup and rebalance their resources and protect their workers.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 in 2020 he cautioned against a full national lockdown, describing it as a “a very extreme restriction on economic and social life” that temporarily “freezes the virus in place”. He added: “You don’t want to use those as your primary, and I stress primary, means of containment. Because in the end living with the virus as a constant threat means maintaining the capacity to find people with the disease and isolating them.” The primary measure, he thought, should be a robust test, trace and isolate system, with lockdown “the reserve you use to take the heat out of the system when things are really bad”.
As a lifelong champion of health equity, he was critical of the global response to the pandemic. He lamented the way that politics had begun shifting how governments responded to global health emergencies. In a 2021 interview with NPR, the US public radio network, he recalled how the global response to Ebola in 2014 had been “amazing”, but that by the time Covid-19 developed in 2020 things had changed. “There has been a funny shift,” he said. “I find world leaders are no longer apparently able to work together and deal with this through a global response.”
Despite his disappointment he worked tirelessly to protect the UK and beyond from the pandemic, arguing forcefully for vaccine equity. “The one thing we want [at the WHO] is every country in the world to be able to access a fair share of the vaccine,” he said. He was knighted in 2023.
His kindness, humility and decency won loyalty from staff, though his work ethic could be challenging. He was the “Gandalf of the UN”, said Aurélia Nguyen of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. He was “always working behind the scenes for a broader purpose in ways that were not visible or needing to take credit but quietly bringing people to the table who otherwise would not speak to each other. He worked all hours relentlessly – some of his staff may say mercilessly – but with such conviction and passion it was impossible not to follow him.”
Born in London, David was one of the four children of Sir John Nabarro, a consultant endocrinologist, and Joan (nee Cockrell). David was educated at Oundle school, Northamptonshire, before studying medicine at Worcester College, Oxford, and University College hospital, London.
He joined WHO in 1999, working first on malaria and later, alongside the director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland on the creation of the global fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, which has since saved millions of lives.
In 2003 he survived the bombing of the Canal hotel in Baghdad while serving as WHO representative for health action in crises. He was appointed senior UN system coordinator for avian influenza (bird flu) in 2005, establishing him as a pioneer in pandemic preparedness.
His most visible role on the international stage came in 2014 when he coordinated an unprecedented response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Facing a situation where “the number of people getting sick was doubling every week”, he helped bring the epidemic under control by engaging the community, building trust and addressing social and economic factors alongside delivering medical aid.
Championing the synergy between social and medical interventions stands as the legacy of his lifetime of service.
In 2019 he became co-director, with me, of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, a role to which he brought his vast operational experience, remarkable ability to build consensus among diverse stakeholders, and readiness to mentor young researchers.
His office was always open to students and colleagues seeking guidance, and his generous spirit enriched the academic community.
Nabarro is survived by his second wife, Florence Lasbennes, whom he married in 2019, and by five children – two sons and a daughter from a relationship with Susanna Graham-Jones, and a daughter and son from his marriage to Gillian Holmes, which ended in divorce – and seven grandchildren.