Previous Fora / 2013
MURRAY, Virginia
Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection, Health Protection Agency
Virginia Murray is qualified in medicine; She joined Guy and St Thomas’s Hospital Poisons Unit in 1980 and in 1986 was appointed consultant medical toxicologist. In 1989 she started Chemical Incident Research Programme and was Director of Chemical Incident Response Service from 1995. Since April 2003 she has worked for the Centre for Radiation, Chemicals and Environmental hazards (CRCE) (part of Public Health England - formerly the Health Protection Agency). She has considerable experience in advising on toxicological and environmental public health aspects of response to acute and chronic chemical and extreme event incidents. Appointed as Visiting Professor in Health Protection, Visiting Professor in Health Protection, MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College and King’s College, London (2004) she has published widely. On 1 January 2011, she was appointed as Head of the new Extreme Events and Health Protection section, Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England) and is taking forward work on evidence base information and advice on flooding, heat, cold, volcanic ash, and other extreme weather and natural hazards events. She is the UK Government member on the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Scientific and Technical Committee since 2008. Since 2009 she has been a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, published in March 2012. She is one of the 15 members of the UNISDR Advisory Group for the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction representing health, and with two other members, science.