Dalia Samhouri, PhD, MPH
World Health organization, Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean
Dr Dalia Samhouri is a regionally and globally known expert in the area of public health with an extensive experience at the scientific, policy, and managerial levels. Dr Samhouri has been working with WHO for 16 years with a strong focus on global health issues. She has been working closely with the 22 countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, and collaborating with other UN agencies, international organizations, and regional and global technical and academic institutions.
Dr. Samhouri is currently the lead of the Health Emergency Preparedness and International Health Regulations at the Cairo-based WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, which takes the lead role in the design and implementation of the WHO region-wide health security preparedness and operational readiness to all hazard emergencies and in the context of mass gatherings and population movements.
Since joining WHO, Dr Samhouri has led extensive and repeated missions to the 22 countries of the region to assess and strengthen surveillance, risk assessment and response to Influenza, MERS-CoV, Ebola, Zika and other communicable diseases. At a border scale, she has been leading the evaluation and implementation of public health capacities of the International Health Regulations (2005) and Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction in integration with health system strengthening.