Dr. Abdullah Mufarrih Assiri, assistant deputy minister for preventive health

Dr. Abdullah Mufarrih Assiri has been the assistant deputy minister for preventive health since 2013.
He is currently the representative of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) and is a member of the IHR Emergency Committee concerning Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
In a recent briefing on the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Assiri highlighted various studies and clinical trials being conducted in the Kingdom in partnership with the WHO’s global research initiative for COVID-19 treatment.
Assiri did his MBBS in 1994 at the College of Medicine, Abha, which is affiliated with King Saud University.
He began his medical career as a resident in the department of medicine at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh and stayed there until 1999 before moving to its Jeddah branch. He worked in Jeddah as an assistant consultant for one year.
From 2003 to 2006, Assiri worked as an internist and adult infectious diseases consultant and hospital epidemiologist at King Abdul Aziz National Guard Hospital in the Eastern Province.
During this period, he also undertook a fellowship in adult infectious diseases from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Assiri was transferred to the southern part of the Kingdom in 2006 to work at the region’s military hospital. Later, he joined King Fahd Medical City in Riyadh.
In 2011, he was appointed the director of the infection prevention and control administration at the Ministry of Health.
He also became an adviser to the deputy minister for public health.
Assiri’s fields of professional concentration include infectious diseases, infection control, public health, and epidemiology.
He is on the national committees on AIDS, immunization, tuberculosis, and the national decontamination services, as well as the scientific committee for the international conference on mass gatherings.