Dr Palitha Abeykoon currently serves as an Advisor to the World Health Organization, and is a member of the WHO- World Bank Global Pandemic Preparedness Monitoring Board, the WHO Global Learning Academy and is a Member of the WHO Global Taskforce on Primary Health Care. Until recently he was one of WHO Director-General’s Special Envoys for COVID-19. He has been a Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka and serves on a number of National Advisory Committees. Dr. Abeykoon is a medical graduate from Sri Lanka, with postgraduate education from the Universities Southern California, and the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was a Taro Takemi Fellow. He had a long career in the WHO in different capacities and was the Regional Advisor in Human Resources for Health at the W.H.O. Office in New Delhi, where he developed the Regional Reorientation of Medical Education Programme, and later was the Director of Health Systems and Communicable Diseases. He also served concurrently as the WHO Representative to India. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Dr Fred Katz Award of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medical Education (ANZAME), the McLaren Leadership Achievement Award of the Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health (APACPH) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from his alma mater, the University of Peradeniya. Dr. Abeykoon is a Former President of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, was chair of the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol, and was awarded the WHO Director General’s Medal for Tobacco Control. He was a Member of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and currently Heads its Accreditation Unit. He holds Fellowships from The Colleges of Community Physicians, Medical Administrators, General Practitioners and the Medical Educationists of Sri Lanka. Dr Abeykoon has published widely in international journals, written chapters in books on public health and medical education, and most recently edited the “Sri Lanka Health in Transition” and the “History of Medicine in Sri Lanka”.