Lembit Rägo
Lembit Rägo, MD, PhD, was a Professor of Clinical Pharmacology (Tartu University) and founder and first Director General of the Estonian Drug Regulatory Authority, State Agency of Medicines. He has two PhD degrees in medicine (one from Tartu University, Estonia, and another from Kuopio University, Finland). In December 1999, he joined the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters, Geneva, as Coordinator of Quality Assurance and Safety: Medicines (QSM) team which included activities related to International Nonproprietary Names (INNs), Quality Assurance, Pharmacovigilance, Regulatory Support, Fighting Falsified Medicines and Prequalification of Medicines. During 2000/2001 Dr Rägo laid the foundations for the WHO Prequalification of Medicines Programme and has continued to contribute to its development ever since. From 2002, he was the main organizer of WHO biennial International Conference of Drug Regulatory Authorities (ICDRA) bringing together regulators from around 100 countries all over the World.
From September 2013, Dr Rägo served as the Head of WHO’s Regulation of Medicines and Other Health Technologies unit. He is well known to many senior regulators in all parts of the World, frequent speaker in different international fora and has numerous publications including on several aspects of regulatory affairs.
He was appointed Secretary-General of CIOMS in April 2016.
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