Faces of WHO – Azad Garibov

Azad Garibov, WHO Country Office, Azerbaijan

4 June 2021

Azad Garibov joined the WHO Country Office in Azerbaijan as a communications consultant in 2020. He handles all communications for the joint COVID-19 response efforts of the European Union and the WHO Regional Office for Europe for the Solidarity for Health Initiative and the Action to Support Deployment of COVID-19 Vaccines and Vaccination projects. This means organizing public awareness campaigns and visibility events, producing news stories and audiovisual content as well as handling national media requests, among others. In this interview, he talks about juggling work, a nearly finished PhD and family life, and shares his best life hacks and health tips.

Not everyone would try to join an organization in the midst of a global crisis. What drew you to WHO?

From the very onset of the pandemic, I was really preoccupied by it. COVID-19 affected everyone’s lives – mine, my family’s, my friends’. I had worked with the Government of Azerbaijan, and as an editor of a semi-academic journal before taking leave to pursue my PhD in political science on incumbent and elite relationships at the Central European University. When I saw an opportunity to join WHO’s team in Azerbaijan as part of the COVID-19 response, I thought it was the right time, and I wanted to contribute. As I was nearly finished with my PhD, I thought I would be able to finalize it quite easily on the side. In hindsight, I’m not sure it was very wise to think I could finish a PhD while working full-time for WHO during the pandemic response! (laughs) My main motivation to join WHO could be described in one word: action. Why sit at home during lockdown, thinking and reading about the pandemic, if there’s an opportunity to be part of the response, combating the pandemic instead of waiting it out passively? I saw the vacancy, I passed the interview, I joined the team and I haven’t regretted it for a second.

And what happened to your PhD?

Well, it obviously had to be postponed. But as the COVID-19 situation has calmed down somewhat, I’m being positive and trying a new strategy. I get up at six in the morning, work on my PhD for a few hours, then take my son to kindergarten, and head to the office. I hope this will work out; so far it really hasn’t, but I’m an optimist!

Tell us an optimistic anecdote about your work.

Oh, I have a good one! Part of the medical supply and equipment deliveries within the joint EU-WHO COVID-19 response were patient monitors. Some of the models were completely new to the hospitals to which they were being delivered, and the staff didn’t always know how to use them. Technicians were working around the clock to help install the equipment, but they couldn’t be everywhere at the same time, so one day I visited a hospital with a cameraman to shoot a video on how some of the new equipment was being used to provide care for COVID-19 patients. When I was there, the doctors asked if I could help install the patient monitors, as they wanted to put them to use as quickly as possible. They explained that they had plugged in the monitors and managed to get about everything else set up, but the monitors kept asking for a PIN. We told them we had no technical knowledge whatsoever about how patient monitors function, but as they insisted that we try, we asked for the user manual, hoping to find a PIN there. The manual turned out to be a really heavy piece, impossible to read through! Then, I suddenly had a thought: what’s the usual default four-digit password? It’s always four zeros or 1234 on your phone, isn’t it? So I just randomly tried four zeros – and ping! The machine started working! Then we did the same for all the other newly delivered monitors in the hospital. The hospital staff were so happy.

What a great story on positive thinking. Now give us your best health tip.

My best health tip continues on that same note. For me, life has one ultimate purpose: one should strive to be happy. What you accumulate in life are your memories and they, and not your wealth, are the most important thing you have. Some years you remember vividly, don’t you? You can sit and chat with your friends about that year, recalling everything that took place, but some years you may not remember at all. If you can’t recall anything from a given month or year, it feels like it was wasted. For me, the good years or months were filled with something memorable, something that fills you with emotions. If you want to live longer, my philosophy is to try to make a lot of memories. Don’t let your years pass unnoticed.

Any particular piece of music to go with that tip?

I prefer inspirational music – music about doing good, fighting for positive change, for poor people, for vulnerable people. I’ll say Man in Black by Johnny Cash and Rose Tattoo by Dropkick Murphys. It’s about becoming a better version of yourself, doing good things despite obstacles, always showing up when you are needed, exploring new things despite challenges, or collecting good memories that make you proud.

If you could invite anyone for dinner, present or historic, who would it be?

At my university, there’s this never-ending debate between the positivists and the post-positivists. Some of my professors represent what you might call the “European school” – for them, it’s mostly about constructivism: there’s no objective reality in the social world; reality is what we make of it and it is intelligible in discourses. The others are more American-style, with a positivist approach backed by quantitative data, numbers and statistics. Sometimes the two groups make fun of each other, like when the university was ranked among the top five political science schools in Europe. One of the most post-positivist professors shared the great news on Facebook. Instantly, the opposite camp’s professors replied saying, “See, numbers matter!”. I found that really funny. While I like doing research backed up by statistics for my PhD, what I enjoy even more is reading constructivists and post-structuralists who bring up the role of identities, ideas and discourses in understanding our otherwise complex world. I read a lot of Michel Foucault in my PhD years and I was fascinated by what scholars have derived from his ideas to enrich constructivist and post-structuralist theories. I would have dinner with Foucault, not to ask a lot of questions, but simply to dine in the presence of a great scholar and have a really interesting discussion.

WHO Country Office in Azerbaijan

• Number of staff: 19, including consultants. The number of staff changes regularly due to COVID-19 emergency response needs.
• Operating since: June 1994
• Key focus areas: health emergencies (COVID-19), primary healthcare, TB, HIV, viral hepatitis and other infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization, antimicrobial resistance, mental health, health systems, country health emergency preparedness and IHR and risk communication.