Dr. Unni Karunakara is a senior fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University.
Karunakara was international president of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from 2010-2013. He has been a humanitarian worker and a public health professional for more than two decades, with extensive experience in the delivery of health care to populations affected by conflict, disasters, epidemics, and neglect in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. He was medical director of the MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines (2005-2007) and co-founded vivo, an organization that works toward overcoming and preventing traumatic stress and its consequences.
Karunakara wasdDirector ad interim of the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) (2024-2025). Earlier, he was a senior fellow of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University (2014-2017). He has held various academic and research fellowships at universities in China, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, and Zimbabwe., focusing on the demography of forced migration and the delivery of health care to neglected populations affected by conflict, disasters and epidemics. Karunakara served as the deputy director of Health of the Earth Institute, Millennium Villages Project (2008-2010), and was assistant clinical professor at the Mailman School of Public Health (2008-2017), both at Columbia University.
Karunakara is currently serving on several advisory boards and committees, at Mukwege Foundation, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Manipal University Prasanna School of Public Health.
Featured Work
FEB 18, 2015 • Podcast
Ebola and Other Viral Outbreaks: Providing Health Care to the Global Poor in Times of Crisis
Why were initial responses to the Ebola outbreak so disastrously inadequate? How can dysfunctional health systems--at all levels--be improved, so that this doesn't happen again? ...